HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 



IK EPITOME, 



^ BR. ALBEKT SCHWEGLEE. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL GERMAN, 



JULIUS H. SEELYE. 



SECOND EDITION. 



NEW YOEK: 
D. APPLETON AN^D OOMP^AIsTY, 

346 & 348 BROADWAY. 

LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 

1856. 






jt^ 



I TBS LlBkARY; 
iof CONGRESS 



WASHINGTON 



Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1856, 
By Julius H. Seelye, 
. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Northern District of New York. 







INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



BY HEi^RY B. SMITH, D. D. 



The History of Philosophy, by Dr. Albert Schwegler, is 
considered in Germany as the best concise manual upon 
the subject from the school of Hegel. Its account of the 
Greek and of the German systems, is of especial value 
and importance. It presents the whole history of specu- 
lation in its consecutive order. Though following the 
method of Hegel's more extended lectures upon the pro- 
gress of philosophy, and though it makes the system of 
Hegel to be the ripest product of philosophy, yet it also 
rests upon independent investigations. It will well re- 
ward diligent study, and is one of the best works for a 



iV INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

text-book in our colleges, upon this neglected branch of 
scientific investigation. Tlie translation is made by a 
competent person, and gives, I doubt not, a faithful ren 
dering of the original. 

Henry B. Smith 



Union Theological Seminary, New York, Nov, 6, 1855. 



J 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE, 



^ ScHWEaLEE's History of Philosopliy originally appeared in 
the '^ J^eue JEneyTdo^ddiefur Wissenschaftenund Kilnste,'^^ 
Its great value soon awakened a call for its separate issue, 
in wMcli form it has attained a very wide circnlation in 
Germany. It is found in the hands of almost every stu- 
dent in the philosophical department of a German uni- 
versity, and is highly esteemed for its clearness, concise- 
ness, and comprehensiveness. 

The present translation was commenced in Germany 
three years ago, and has been carefully finished. It was 
undertaken with the conviction that the work would not 
lose its interest or its value in an English dress, and with 
the hope that it might be of wider service in such a form 



VI 



to students of philosophy here. It was thought espe- 
cially, that a proper translation of this manual would 
supply a want for a suitable text-book on this branch of 
study, long felt by both teachers and students in our 
American colleges. 

The effort has been made to translate, and not to para- 
phrase the author's meaning. Many of his statements 
might have been amplified without diffuseness, and made 
more perceptible to the superficial reader without losing 
their interest to the more profound student, but he has so 
happily seized upon the germs of the different systems, 
that they neither need, nor would be improved by any 
farther development, and has, moreover, presented them 
so clearly, that no student need have any difficulty in ap- 
prehending them as they are. The translator has there- 
fore endeavored to represent faithfully and clearly the 
original history. As such, he offers his work to the 
American public, indulging no hope, and making no ef- 
forts for its success beyond that which its own merits 
shall ensure. J. H. S. 

SoHENECTADY, N. Y., January, 1856. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE, by Henkt B. Smith, D. D. . 

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Section L— WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
IL— CLASSIFICATION 

IIL— GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIO PHILOSOPHY 

1. The Ionics ....... 

2. The Pythagoreans 

3. The Eleatics .... 

4. Heraclitus 

5. The Atomists 



7. The Sophists 

lY.— THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS . 

1. Thales . . . , 

2. Anaximander . . • 

3. Anaximenes .... 
4 Retrospect 

V.-PYTHAGOREANISM . 

1. Its Relative Position 

2. Historical and Chronological 

3. The Pythagorean Principle 

4. Carrying out of this Principle 

YL— THE ELEATICS 

1. The Relation of the Eleatio Principle to the Pythagorean 

2. Xenophanes 

3. Parmenides 

4. Zeno .... 



11 

16 

17 
17 
18 
18 
18 
19 
19 
20 

21 

21. 

22 

23 

28 



23 
23 
24 
25 

27 
27 
28 
28 
80 



VIU 



CONTENTS. 



Heraclitic Philo- 



Sect. VII.-HERACLITUS 

1. Eelation of the Heraclitic Principle to the Eleatic 

2. Historical and Chronological 
8. The Principle of the Becoming 

4. The Principle of Fire 

5. Transition to the Atomists 

VIII.— EMPEDOCLES 

1. General View .... 

2. The Four Elements . . . , 

3. The Two Powers 

4. Eelation of the Empedoclean to the Eleatic and 

sophy . . . . , 

IX.— THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY 

1. Its Propounders . . . , 

2. The Atoms .... 

3. The Fulness and the Void 

4. The Atomistic Necessity 

5. Eelative Position of the Atomistic Philosophy 



X.— ANAXAGOEAS .... 

1. His Personal History 

2. His Eelation to his Predecessors 

3. The Principle of the V6» us .... 

4. Anaxagoras as the close of the Pre-Socratic Eealism 

XI.— THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY 

1. The Eelation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Anaxagorcan Prin- 

ciple ..... 

2. Eelation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Universal Life of that 

Age ........ 

3. Tendencies of the Sophistic Philosophy 

4. Significance of the Sophistic Philosophy from its relation to the 

Culture of the Age ...... 

5. Individual Sophists ...... 

6. Transition to Socrates, and characteristic of the following Period 



XII.— SOCRATES 

1. Ilis Personal Character .... 

2. Socrates and Aristophanes .... 

3. The Condemnation of Socrates 

4. The Genius of Socrates .... 

5. Sources of the Pliilosophy of Socrates 

6. Universal Character of the Philosophizing of Socrates 

7. The Socratic Method . . " . 

8. The Socratic Doctrine concerning Virtue 



XIII.— THE PAETIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCEATES 

1. Their Eelation to the Socratic Philosophy 

2. Antisthenes and the Cynics 



PAGIB 
31 
81 



CONTENTS. IX 

Sect. Xlll.—(conU7iued.) . pagb 

3. Aristippus and the Cyrenians ...,,, 69 

4. Euclid and the Megarians ..,.,, 70 

5. Plato as the complete Socraticist . . . . .71 

XIY.— PLATO 

I. Plato's Life .....,, 

1. His Youth 

2. His Years of Discipline . . , . , 

3. His Years of Travel . . . » . 

4. His Years of Instruction ..... 
II. The Inner Development op the Platonic Philosophy 4nd 

Writings ....... 

III. Classification of the Platonic System 

lY. The Platonic Dialectics ..... 

1. Conception of Dialectics . . . . , 

2. What is Science ? . . . . 

(1.) As opposed to Sensation . <. . 

(2.) The Eelation of Knowing to Opinion 
(3.) The Eelation of Science to Thinking 

3. The Doctrine of Ideas in its Genesis 

4. Positive Exposition of the Doctrine of Ideas 

5. The Eelation of Ideas to the Phenomenal World 

6. The Idea of the Good and the Deity 
Y. The Platonic Physics ..... 

1. Nature . . . 

2. The Soul 

YI. The Platonic Ethics ...... 

1. Good and Pleasure ..... 

2. Yirtue ........ 

3. The State 

XY.— THE OLD ACADEMY 

XYL— AEISTOTLE . 

I. Life and Writings of Aristotle , . . 

II. Universal Character and Division of the Aristotelian Phi- 
losophy ....... 

III. Logic and Metaphysics . . 

1. Conception and Eelation of the Two 

2. Logic ....... 

3. Metaphysics ...... 

(1.) The Aristotelian Criticism of the Platonic Doctrine of 
Ideas ....... 

(2.) The Fofir Aristotelian Principles, or Causes, and the 
Eelation of Form and Matter . 

(3.) Potentiality and Actuality . . , , 

(4.) The Absolute Divine Spirit 
lY. The Aristotelian Physics ..... 

1. Motion, Matter, Space, and Time 

2. The Collective Universe ..... 

3. Nature ....... 

4. Man ........ 

1* 



CONTENTS. 



Sect. XVI.^(conUnued.) 

V. The Aristotelian Ethics .... 

1. Eelation of Ethics to Physics . . . 

2. The Highest Good .... 
8. Conception of Virtue ..... 
4. The State 

VI. The Peripatetic School .... 

VII. Transition to the Post-Aeistotelian Philosophy 

XVII.— STOICISM 

1. Logic ....... 

2. Physics ....... 

3. Ethics 

(1.) Eespecting the Eelation of Virtue to Pleasure . 
(2.) The View of the Stoics concerning External Good 
(3.) Farther Verification of this View 
(4.) Impossihility of furnishing a System of Concrete Moral 
Duties from this Standpoint 



XVIII.-EPICUEEANISM . . . . , 

XIX.— SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY 

1. The Old Scepticism . . . , 

2. The New Academy 

3. The Later Scepticism . . . , 

XX.— THE EOMANS 

XXL— NEW PLATONISM . . , , 

1. Ecstasy as a Subjective State . , 

2. The Cosmical Principles .... 

3. The Emanation Theory of the New Platonists 

XXIL— CHEISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM 

1. The Christian Idea .... 

2. Scholasticism ..... 

3. Nominalism and Eealism . . . , 

XXIIL— TEANSITION TO THE MODEEN PHILOSOPHY 

1. Fall of Scholasticism . . . . , 

2. The Eesults of Scholasticism 
8. The Eevival of Letters 

4. The German Eeformation 

5. The Advancement of the Natural Sciences 

6. Bacon of Verulam .... 

7. The Italian Philosophers of the Transition Epoch 

8. Jacob Boehmo ..... 



XXIV.— DESCAETES 

1. The Beginning of Philosophy with Doubt 

2. Cogito ergo sum ..... 

3. The Nature of Mind deduced from this Principle 

4. The Universal Eule of all Certainty follows from the same 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



Sect. XXIY. — (continued.) 

5. The Existence of God 

6. Eesults of this Fact in Philosophy . 

7. The Two Substances 

8. The Anthropology of Descartes 

9. Eesults of the Cartesian System . 

XXV.— GEULINCX AND MALEBRANCHE 

1. Geulincx ..... 

2. Malebranche .... 

3. The Defects of the Philosophy of Descartes 

XXVI.-SPINOZA 

1. The One Infinite Substance 

2. The Two Attributes . 
8. The Modes . . . : 

4. His Practical Philosophy , , 

XXVII.-IDEALISM AND EEALISM 

XXVIII.— LOCKE 

XXIX.— HUME 

XXX.-CONDILLAC 
XXXI.-HELVETIUS ..... 

XXXIL— THE FEENCH CLEAEING UP AND MATEEIALISM . 

1. The Common Character of the French Philosophers of this i 

2. Voltaire ....... 

3. Diderot 

4. La Mettrie's Materialism 

5. Systeme de la Nature 

(1.) The Materiality of Man 

(2.) The Atheism of this System 

(3.) Its Denial of Freedom and Immortality 

(4.) The Practical Consequences of these Principles 

XXXIII.— LEIBNITZ 

1. The Doctrine of Monads 

2. The Monads more accurately determined 

3. The Pre-established Harmony 

4. The Eelation of the Deity to the Monads 

5. The Eelation of Soul and Body 

6. The Theory of Knowledge 

7. Leibnitz's Th^odicee . 

XXXIV.— BERKELEY 

XXXV.— WOLFF 

1. Ontology . . • . . • 

2. Cosmology .... 

8. Eational Psychology 
4. Natural Theology 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



Sect. XXXVI.— THE GERMAN CLEARING- UP . 

XXXVII.— TRANSITION TO KANT 

1. Examination of the Faculty of Knowledge 

2. Three Chief Principles of the Kantian Theory of Knowledge 

XXXVIII.-KANT 

I. Critick of Puee Reason . . 

1. The Transcendental Esthetics 

(1.) The Metaphysical Discussion 
(2.) The Transcendental Discussion 

2. The Transcendental Analytic . 

3. The Transcendental Dialectics 

(1.) The Psychological Ideas . 
(2.) The Antinomies of Cosmology 
(3.) The Ideal of the Pure Reason 

(a.) The Ontological Proof 

(b.) The Cosmological Proof . 

(c.) The Physico-Theological Proof 
II. Critick of the Practical Reason 
0.) The Analytic . 
(2.) The Dialectic : What is this Highest Good ? 

(a.) Perfect Virtue or Holiness 

(&.) Perfect Happiness . 

(c.) Kant's Views of Religion 
III. Critick of the Faculty of Judgment 

1. Critick of the Esthetic Faculty of Judgment 

(1.) Analytic ..... 
(2.) Dialectic . .*.*.*. 

2. Critick of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment 

(1.) Analytic of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment . 
(2.) Dialectic ..... 

XXXIX.-TRANS1TI0N TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY 

XL.— JACOBI 

XLL— FICHTE . 

I. The Ficiitian PniLosopHY in its Original Form 

1. The Theoretical Philosophy of Fichte, his Wissenschafts- 

lehre, or Theory of Science .... 

2. Fichte's Practical Philosophy . 
II. The Later Form of Ficiite's Philosophy . 

XLIL-HERBART 

1. The Basis and Starting-Point of Philosophy 

2. The First Act of Philosophy 
8. Remodelling the Conceptions of Experience 

4. Herbart's Reals 

5. Psychology connected with Metaphysics 

6. The Importance of Herbart's Philosophy 



PAGE 

227 

229 

230 
232 

235 

238 
238 
239 
239 
241 
246 
247 
248 
249 
249 
250 
250 
252 
254 
256 
257 
258 
259 
262 
263 
263 
265 
266 
267 
267 

. 268 
271 

279 

282 

282 
295 
301 

303 
304 
804 
805 
306 
310 
811 



CONTENTS. 



XIH 



PAGE 

Bect. XLIIL— SCHELLING 312 

I. First Period: Schelling's Procession from Fichte . 314 
11. Second Period: Standpoint of the distinguishing be- 
tween THE Philosophy of Nature and of Mind . 318 

1. Natural Philosophy . . . . . . 318 

(1.) Organic Nature . . . . . .819 

(2.) Inorganic Nature ..... 821 

(8.) The Keciprocal Determination of the Organic and Inor- 
ganic World ...... 321 

2. Transcendental Philosophy . , . . . 322 

(1.) The Theoreiical Philosophy .... 823 

(2.) The Practical Philosophy .... 324 

(8.) Philosophy of Art 324 

III. Third Period : Period of Spinozism, or the Indifference of 

THE Ideal and the Eeal ..... 826 

IV. Fourth Period : The Direction of Schelling's x hilosophy 

AS Mystical, and allied to New Platonism . . 333 
Y. Fifth Period: Attempt at a Theogony and Cosmogony, 

after the Manner of Jacob Boehme . . . 835 

(1.) The Progressive Development of Nature to Man . 33T 

(2.) The Development of Mind in Histoiy . . 33T 

VI. Sixth Period ....... 888 



XLV.- 



-HEGEL 


. 343 


I. Science of Logic .... 


. . 846 


1. The Doctrine of Being .... 


. 347 


(1.) Quality .... 


347 


(2.) Quantity ..... 


. 348 


(3.) Measure .... 


848 


2. The Doctrine of Essence 


. 349 


(1.) The Essence as such 


349 


(2.) Essence and Phenomenon 


. 850 


(3.) Actuality .... 


351 


3. The Doctrine of the Conception 


. 852 


(1.) The Subjective Conception 


852 


(2.) Objectivity .... 


. 853 


(3.) The Idea .... 


353 


II. The Science of Nature . . . . 


. 353 


1. Mechanics ..... 


354 


2. Physics ...... 


. 355 


8. Organics ..... 


355 


(1.) Geological Organism 


. 355 


(2.) Vegetable Organism 


855 


(3.) Animal Organism 


. 866 


III. Philosophy of Mind .... 


356 


1. The Subjective Mind .... 


. 356 


2. The Objective Mind 


858 


3. The Absolute Mind .... 


. 362 



XIV CONTENTS. 



Sect. XLV.— (confimted) 


PAGE 


(1.) Esthetics 


868 


(a.) Architecture .... 


868 


(&.) Sculpture ..... 


368 


(c.) Painting 


864 


(6?.) Music 


364 


{e.) Poetry 


. 864 


(2.) Philosophy of Religion .... 


364 


(a.) The Natural Eeligion of the Oriental World 


. 364 


(&.) The Eeligion of Mental Individuality 


364 


(c.) Revealed, or the Christian Religion . 


365 


(8.) Absolute Philosophy .... 


865 



HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



SECTION I. 



WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

To philosophiize is to reflect ; to examine things, in thought. 

Yet in this is the conception of philosophy not sufficiently 
defined. Man, as thinking, also employs those practical activities 
concerned in the adaptation of means to an end ; the whole body 
of sciences also, even those which do not in strict sense belong 
to philosophy, still lie in the realm of thought. In what, then, 
is philosophy distinguished from thes^ sciences, e, g. from the 
science of astronomy, of medicine, or of rights ? Certainly not 
in that it has a different material to work upon. Its material is 
precisely the same as that of the different empirical sciences. 
The construction and disposition of the universe, the arrangement 
and functions of the human body, the doctrines of property, of 
rights and of the state — all these materials belong as truly to 
philosophy as to their appropriate sciences. That which is given 
in the world of experience, that which is real, is the content like- 
wise of philosophy. It is not, therefore, in its material but in its 



12 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

form, in its method, in its mode of knowledge, that philosophy Is 
to be distinguished from the empirical sciences. These latter 
derive their material directly from experience; they find it at 
hand and take it up just as they find it. Philosophy, on the other 
hand, is never satisfied with receiving that which is given simply 
as it is given, but rather follows it out to its ultimate grounds ; it 
examines every individual thing in reference to a final principle, 
and considers it as one link in the whole chain of knowledge. In 
this way philosophy removes from the individual thing given in 
experience, its immediate, individual, and accidental character ; 
from the sea of empirical individualities, it brings out that which 
is common to all ; from the infinite and orderless mass of con- 
tingencies it finds that which is necessary, and throws over all a 
universal law. In short, philosophy examines the totality of 
experience in the form of an organic system in harmony with the 
laws of thought. From the above it is seen, that philosophy (in 
the sense we have given it) and the empirical sciences have a 
reciprocal influence; the latter conditioning the former, while 
they at the same time are conditioned by it. We shall, therefore, 
in the history of the world, no more find an absolute and complete 
philosophy, than a complete empirical science {Empirik). Rather 
is philosophy found only in the form of the different philosophical 
systems, which have successively appeared in the course of 
history, advancing hand in hand with the progress of the empirical 
sciences and the universal, social, and civil culture, and showing 
in their advance the different steps in the development and im- 
provement of human science. The history of philosophy has, for 
its object, to represent the content, the succession, and the inner 
connection of these philosophical systems. 

The relation of these different systems to each other is thus 
already intimated. The historical and collective life of the race 
is bound together by the idea of a spiritual and intellectual pro- 
gress, and manifests a regular order of advancing, though not 
always continuous, stages of development. In this, the fact har- 
monizes with what we should expect from antecedent probabilities. 
Since, therefore, every philosophical system is only the philo- 



WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 13 

sophical expression of the collective life of its time, it follows tliat 
these different systems which have appeared in history will dis- 
close one organic movement and form together one rational and 
internally connected (gegliedertes) system. In all their develop- 
ments, we shall find one constant order, grounded in the striving 
of the spirit ever to raise itself to a higher point of consciousness 
and knowledge, and to recognize the whole spiritual and natural 
universe, more and more, as its outward being, as its reality, as 
the mirror of itself. 

Hegel was the first to utter these thoughts and to consider 
the history of philosophy as a united process, but this view, 
which is, in its principle, true, he has applied in a way which 
would destroy the freedom of human actions, and remove the very 
conception of contingency, i, e, that any thing should be contrary 
to reason. Hegel's view is, that the succession of the systems of 
philosophy which have appeared in history, corresponds to the 
succession of logical categories in a system of logic. According 
to him, if, from the fundamental conceptions of these different 
philosophical systems, we remove that which pertains to their 
outward form or particular application, &c., so do we find the 
different steps of the logical conceptions {e. g. being, becoming, 
existence, being per se {fwsichseyn) quantity, &c.). And on the 
other hand, if we take up the logical process by itself, we find also 
in it the actual historical process. 

This opinion, however, can be sustained neither in its prin- 
ciple nor in its historical application. It is defective in its prin- 
ciple, because in history freedom and necessity interpenetrate, and, 
therefore, while we find, if we consider it in its general aspects, a 
rational connection running through the whole, we also see, if we 
look solely at its individual parts, only a play of numberless con- 
tingencies, just as the kingdom of nature, taken as a whole, 
reveals a rational plan in its successions, but viewed only in its 
parts, mocks at every attempt to reduce them to a preconceived 
plan. In history we have to do with free subjectivities, with in- 
dividuals capable of originating actions, and have, therefore, a 
factor which does not admit of a previous calculation. For how- 



14 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ever accurately we may estimate the controlling conditions which 
may attach to an individual, from the general circumstances in 
which he may be placed, his age, his associations, his nationality, 
&c., a free will can never be calculated like a mathematical pro- 
blem. History is no example for a strict arithmetical calculation. 
The history of philosophy, therefore, cannot admit of an apriori 
construction ; the actual occurrences should not be joined together 
as illustrative of a preconceived plan; but the facts, so far as 
they can be admitted, after a critical sifting, should be received 
as such, and their rational connection be analytically determined. 
The speculative idea can only supply the law for the arrangement 
and scientific connection of that which may be historically 
furnished. 

A more comprehensive view, which contradicts the above- 
given Hegelian notion, is the following. The actual historical 
development is, very generally, different from the theoretical. 
Historically e. g, the State arose as a means of protection against 
robbers, while theoretically it is derived from the idea of rights. 
So also, even in the actual history of philosophy, while the logi- 
cal (theoretical) process is an ascent from the abstract to the con- 
crete, yet does the historical development of philosophy, quite 
generally, descend from the concrete to the abstract, from intui- 
tion to thought, and separates the abstract from the concrete in 
those general forms of culture and those religious and social cir- 
cumstances, in which the philosophizing subject is placed. A 
system of philosophy proceeds synthetically, while the history of 
philosophy, i. e, the history of the thinking process proceeds 
analytically. We might, therefore, with great propriety, adopt 
directly the reverse of the Hegelian position, and say that what 
in reality is the first, is for us, in fact, the last. This is illustra- 
ted in the Ionic philosophy. It began not with being as an ab- 
stract conception, but with the most concrete, and most apparent, 
e, g, with the material conception of water, air, &c. Even if we 
leave the Ionics and advance to the being of the Eleatics or the 
becoming of the Heraclitics, we find, that these, instead of being 
pure thought determinations, are only unpurified conceptions, and 



WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 15 

materially colored intuitions. Still farther, is the attempt im- 
practicable to refer every philosophy that has appeared in history 
to some logical category as its central principle, because the most 
of these philosophies have taken, for their object, the idea, not as 
an abstract conception, but in its realization as nature and mind, 
and, therefore, for the most part, have to do, not with logical 
questions, but with those relating to natural philosophy, psycho- 
logy and ethics. Hegel should not, therefore, limit his compari- 
son of the historical and systematic process of development simply 
to logic, but should extend it to the whole system of philosophical 
science. Granted that the Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the 
Atomists may have made such a category as the centre of their 
systems, and we may find thus far the Hegelian logic in harmony 
with the Hegelian history of philosophy. But if we go farther, 
how is it ? How with Anaxagoras, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, 
Aristotle ? We cannot, certainly, without violence, press one 
central principle into the systems of these men, but if we should 
be able to do it, and could reduce e. g, the philosophy of Anaxa- 
goras to the conception of " the end," that of the Sophists to the 
conception of " the appearance," and the Socratic Philosophy to 
the conception of " the good," — yet even then we have the new 
difficulty that the historical does not correspond to the logical 
succession of these categories. In fact, Hegel himself has not 
attempted a complete application of his principle, and indeed gave 
it up at the very threshold of the Grecian philosophy. To the 
Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the Atomists, the logical categories 
of "being," '^ becoming," and being per se may be successively 
ascribed, and so far, as already remarked, the parallelism extends, 
but no farther. Not only does Anaxagoras follow with the con- 
ception of reason working according to an end, but if we go back 
before the Eleatics, we find in the very beginning of philosophy 
a total diversity between the logical and historical order. If 
Hegel had carried out his principle consistently, he should have 
thrown away entirely the Ionic philosophy, for matter is no logical 
category ;' he should have placed the Pythagoreans after the 
Eleatics and the Atomists, for in logical order the categories of 



16 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

quantity follow those of quality ; in short, he would have been 
obliged to set aside all chronology. Unless this be done, we must 
be satisfied with a theoretical reproduction of the course which the 
thinking spirit has taken in its history, only so far as we can see 
in the grand stages of history a rational progress of thought ; only 
so far as the philosophical historian, surveying a period of de- 
velopment, actually finds in it a philosophical acquisition, — the 
acquisition of a new idea : but we must guard ourselves against 
applying to the transition and intermediate steps, as well as to the 
whole detail of history, the postulate of an immanent conformity 
to law, or an organism in harmony with our own thoughts. His- 
tory often winds its way like a serpent in lines which appear retro- 
gressive, and philosophy, especially, has not seldom withdrawn 
herself from a wide and already fruitful field, in order to settle 
down upon a narrow strip of land, the limits even of which she 
has sought still more closely to abridge. At one time we find 
thousands of years expended in fruitless attempts with only a 
negative result ; — at another, a fulness of philosophical ideas are 
crowded together in the experience of a lifetime. There is here 
no sway of an immutable and regularly returning law, but history, 
as the realm of freedom, will first completely manifest itself at 
the end of time as the work of reason. 



1 



SECTION II, 

CLASSIFICATION. 



A FEW words will sufiice to define our problem and classify its 
elements. Where and when does philosophy begin ? Manifestly, 
according to the analysis made in § I., where a final philosophical 
principle, a final ground of being is first sought in a philosophical 
way, — and hence with the Grecian philosophy. The Oriental — 
Chinese and Hindoo — so named philosophies, — but which are 
rather theologies or mythologies, — and the mythic cosmogonies of 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIO PHILOSOPHY. 17 

Greece, in its earliest periods, are, therefore, excluded from our 
more definite problem. Like Aristotle, we shall begin the history 
of philosophy with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude also 
the philosophy of the Christian middle ages, or Scholasticism. 
This is not so much a philosophy, as a philosophizing or reflecting 
within the already prescribed limits of positive religion. It is, 
therefore, essentially theology, and belongs to the science of the 
history of Christian doctrines. 

The material which remains after this exclusion, may be 
naturally divided into two periods ; viz : — ancient; — Grecian and 
Graeco-Romanic — and modern philosophy. Since a preliminary 
comparison of the characteristics of these two epochs could not 
here be given without a subsequent repetition, we shall first speak 
of their inner relations, when we come to treat of the transition 
from the one to the other. 

The first epoch can be still farther divided into three periods ; 
(1.) The pre-Socratic philosophy, i. e. from Thales to the Sophists 
inclusive ; (2.) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ; (3.) The post- Aris- 
totelian philosophy, including New Platonism. 



SECTION III. 

GENEEAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 

1. The universal tendency of the pre-Socratic philosophy is 
to find some principle for the explanation of nature. Nature, the 
most immediate, that which first met the eye and was the most 
palpable, was that which first aroused the inquiring mind. At the 
basis of its changing forms, — beneath its manifold appearances, 
thought they, lies a first principle which abides the same through 
all change. What then, they asked, is this principle ? What is 
the original ground of things ? Or, more accurately, what ele- 
ment of nature is the fundamental element ? To solve this 
inquiry was the problem of the Ionic natural philosophers. One 



18 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

proposes as a solution, water, another, air, and a third, an original 
chaotic matter. 

2. The Pythagoreans attempted a higher solution of this 
problem. The proportions and dimensions of matter rather than 

I its sensible concretions, seemed to them to furnish the true ex- 
planation of being. They, accordingly, adopted as the principle 
of their philosophy, that which would express a determination of 
proportions, i, e. numbers. " Number is the essence of all things," 
was their position. Number is the mean between the immediate 
I sensuous intuition and the pure thought. Number and measure 
have, to be sure, nothing to do with matter only in so far as it 
possesses extension, and is capable of division in space and time, 
but yet we should have no numbers or measures if there were no 
matter, or nothing which could meet the intuitions of our sense. 
^This elevation above matter, which is at the same time a cleaving 
\ to matter, constitutes the essence and the character of Pythago- 
reanism. 

3. Next come the Eleatics, who step absolutely beyond that 
which is given in experience, and make a complete abstraction of 
every thing material. This abstraction, this negation of all divi- 
sion in gpace and time, they take as their principle, and call it 
pure being. Instead of the sensuous principle of the Ionics, or 
the symbolic principle of the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, there- 
fore, adopt an intelligible principle. 

4. Herewith closes the analytic, the first course in the 
development of Grecian philosophy, to make way for the second, 
or synthetic course. The Eleatics had sacrificed to their principle 
of pure being, the existence of the world and every finite existence. 
But the denial of nature and the world could not be maintained. 
The reality of both forced itself upon the attention, and even the 
Eleatics had affirmed it, though in guarded and hypothetical 
terms. But from their abstract being there was no passage back 
to the sensuous and concrete ; their principle ought to have ex- 
plained the being of events, but it did not. To find a principle 



\ 



j for the explanation of these, a principle which would account for 



the becoming, the event was still the problem. Heraditus solved 



'1 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 19 

it, by asserting that, inasmucli as being has no more reality than 
not being, therefore the unity of the two, or in other words the 
becoming, is the absolute principle. He held that it belonged to 
the very essence of finite being that it be conceived in a continual 
flow, in an endless stream. ^' Every thing flows." We have here 
the conception of original energy, instead of the Ionic original 
matter ; the first attempt to explain being and its motion from a 
principle analytically attained. From the time of Heraclitus, this 
inquiry after the cause of the becoming, remained the chief interest 
and the moving spring of philosophical development. 

5. Becoming is the unity of being and not-being, and into 
these two elements is the Heraclitic principle consciously analyzed 
by the Atomists, Heraclitus had uttered the principle of the 
becoming, but only as a fact of experience. He had simply ex- 
pressed it as a law, but had not explained it. The necessity for 
this universal law yet remained to be proved. Why is every thing 
in a perpetual flow — in an eternal movement? From the dy- 
namical combination of matter and the moving force, the next 
step was to a consciously determined distinction, to a mechanical 
division of the two. Thus Empedocles combining the doctrines 
of Heraclitus and Parmenides, considered matter as the abiding 
being, while force was the ground of the movement. But the 
Atomists still considered the moving mythic energies as forces ; 
Empedocles regarded them as love and hate ; and Democritus as 
unconscious necessity. The result was, therefore, that the be- 
coming was rather limited as a means for the mechanical explana- 
tion of nature, than itself explained. 

6. Despairing of any merely materialistic explanation of the 
becoming, Anaxagoras next appears, and places a world-forming 
Intelligence by the side of matter. He recognized mind as the 
primal causality, to which the existence of the world, together 
with its determined arrangement and design {zwechmdssigheii) 
must be referred. In this, philosophy gained a great principle, 
viz. — an ideal one. But Anaxagoras did not know how to fully 
carry out his principles. Instead of a theoretical comprehension of 
the universe — instead of deriving being from the idea, he grasped 



20 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

again after some mechanical explanation. His " world-forming 
reason" serves him only as a first impulse, only as a moving 
power. It is to him a Deus ex machina. Notwithstanding, 
therefore, his glimpse of something higher than matter, yet was 
Anaxagoras only a physical philosopher, like his predecessors. 
Mind had not yet appeared to him as a true force above nature, 
as an organizing soul of the universe. 

7. It is, therefore, a farther progress in thought, to compre- 
hend accurately the distinction between mind and nature, and to 
recognize mind as something higher and contra-distinguished from 
all natural being. This problem fell to the Sophists. They en- 
tangled in contradictions, the thinking which had been confined 
to the object, to that which was given, and gave to the objective 
world which had before been exalted above the subject, a sub- 
ordinate position in the dawning and yet infantile consciousness 
of the superiority of subjective thinking. The Sophists carried 
their principle of subjectivity, though at first this was only nega- 
tive, into the form of the universal religious and political chang- 
ing condition {Aufkldrung). * They stood forth as the destroy- 
ers of the whole edifice of thought that had been thus far built, 
until Socrates appeared, and set up against this principle of 
empirical subjectivity, that of the ah solute subjectivity, — that of 
the spirit in the form of a free moral will, and the thought is pos- 
itively considered as something higher than existence, as the 
truth of all reality. With the Sophist closes our first peri- 
od, for with these the oldest philosophy finds its self-destruction 
{Selhstauflosung). 

* This word literally means clearing up, but has a phUosopliical sense for 
which no precise equivalent is found in the English language. When used 
physically, it denotes that every obstruction which prevented the clear sighi 
of the bodily eye is removed, and when used psychologically it implies the 
same fact in reference to our mental vision. The AufUdrung in philosophy is 
hence the clearing up of difficulties which have hindered a true philosophical 
insight. To express this, I know of no better word than the literal rendering, 
" lip-clearing''^ or " clearing up^^ which the reader will find adopted in the fol- 
lowing pages. — Translator. 



THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 21 

SECTION IV. 

THE lOISriC PHILOSOPHEKS. 

1. Thales. — At the head of the Ionic natural philosophers, 
and therefore at the head of philosophy, the ancients are generally 
agreed in placing Thales of Miletus, a cotemporary of Croesus and 
Solon ; although this beginning lies more in the region of tradi- 
tion than of history. The philosophical principle to which he 
owes his place in the history of philosophy is, that, " the principle 
(the primal, the original ground) of all things is water ; from 
water everything arises and into water every thing returns." But 
simply to assume water as the original ground of things was not 
to advance beyond his myth-making predecessors and their cos- 
mologies. Aristotle, himself, when speaking of Thales, refers to 
the old " theologians," — meaning, doubtless. Homer and Hesiod, 
— who had ascribed to Oceanus and Thetis, the origin of all 
things. Thales, however, merits his place as the beginner of 
philosophy, because he made the first attempt to establish his 
physical principle, without resorting to a mythical representation, 
and, therefore, brought into philosophy a scientific procedure. 
He is the first who has placed his foot upon the ground of a logical 
{verstdndig) explanation of nature. We cannot now say with 
certainty, how he came to adopt his principle, though he might 
have been led to it, by perceiving that dampness belonged to the 
seed and nourishment of things ; that warmth is developed from 
moisture ; and that, generally, moisture might be the plastic, liv- 
ing and life-giving principle. From the condensation and expan- 
sion of this first principle, he derives, as it seems, the changes of 
things, though the way in which this is done, he has not accurately 
determined. 

The philosophical significance of Thales does not appear to 
extend eny farther. He was not a speculative philosopher after 
a later mode. Philosophical book-making was not at all the order 



22 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of his day, and lie does not seem to have given any of his opinions 
a written form. On account of his ethico-political wisdom, he is 
numbered among the so-named " seven wise men," and the char- 
acteristics which the ancients furnish concermng him only testify 
to his practical understanding. He is said e, g, to have first cal- 
^ eulated an eclipse of the sun, to have superintended the turning 
of the course of the Halys under Croesus, &c. When subsequent 
narrators relate that he had asserted the unity of the world, had 
set up the idea of a world-soul, and had taught the immortality of 
the soul and the personality of God, it is doubtless an unhistorical 
reference of later ideas to a stand-point, which was, as yet, far from 
being developed. 

2. Anaximander. — Anaximander, sometimes represented by 
the ancients as a scholar and sometimes as a companion of Thales, 
but who was, at all events, younger than the latter, sought to 
carry out still farther his principles. The original essence which 
he assumed, and which he is said to have been the first to have 
named principle (apx^i)? ^^ defined as the " unlimited, eternal and 
unconditioned," as that which embraced all things and ruled all 
things, and which, since it lay at the basis of all determinateness 
of the finite and the changeable, is itself infinite and undeter- 
minate. How we are to regard this original essence of Anaxi- 
mander is a matter of dispute. Evidently it was not one of the 
four common elements, though we must not, therefore, think it 
was something incorporeal and immaterial. Anaximander proba- 
bly conceived it as the original matter before it had separated 
into determined elements, — as that which was first in the order of 
time, or what is in our day called the chemical indifference in the 
opposition of elements. In this respect his original essence is 
indeed " unlimited " and " undetermined," i. e. has no determina- 
tion of quality nor limit of quantity, yet it is not, therefore, in 
any way, a pure dynamical principle, as perhaps the " friendship" 
and " enmity" of Empedocles might have been, but it was only a 
more philosophical expression for the same thought, which the old 
cosmogonies have attempted to utter in their representation of 
chaos. Accordingly, Anaximander suffers the original opposition 



THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 23 

of cold and warm, of dry and moist (^. e. the basis of the four 
elements) to be secreted from his original essence, a clear proof 
that it was only the undeveloped, unanalyzed, potential being of 
these elemental opposites. 

3. Anaximenes. — Anaximenes, who is called by some the 
scholar, and by others the companion of Anaximander, turned 
back more closely to the view of Thales, in that he made air as 
the principle of all things. The perception that air surrounds 
the whole world, and that breath conditions the activity of life, 
seems to have led him to his position. 

4. Eetrospect. — The whole philosophy of the three Ionic 
sages may be reduced to these three points, viz: — (1.) They 
sought for the universal essence of concrete being; (2.) They 
found this essence in a material substance or substratum ; (3.) 
They gave some intimation respecting the derivation of the ele- 
ments from this original matter. 



SECTION V. 

PYTHAGOREANISM. 

1. Its Relative Position. — The development of the Ionic 
philosophy discloses the tendency to abstract matter from all else ; 
though they directed this process solely to the determined qualiiy 
of matter. It is this abstraction carried to a higher step, when 
we look away from the sensible concretions of matter, and no 
more regard its qualitative determinateness as water, air, &c., but 
only direct our attention to its quantitative determinateness, — to 
its space-filling property. But the determinateness of quantity is 
number, and this is the principle and stand-point of Pythagorean- 
ism. 

2. Historical and Chronological. — The Pythagorean doc- 
trine of numbers is referred to Pythagoras of Samos, who is said 
to have flourished between 540 and 500 B. C. He dwelt in the 



24 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

latter part of his life at Crotonia, in Magna Grecia, where he 
founded a society, or, more properly, an order, for the moral and 
political regeneration of the lower Italian cities. Through this 
society, this new direction of philosophy seems to have been 
introduced, — though more as a mode of life than in the form of a 
scientific theory. What is related concerning the life of Pytha- 
goras, his journeys, the new order which he founded, his political 
influence upon the lower Italian cities, &c., -s so thoroughly inter- 
woven with traditions, legends, and palpable fabrications, that we 
can be certain at no point that we stand upoi i a historical basis. 
Not only the old Pythagoreans, who have spoken of him, de- 
lighted in the mysterious and esoteric, but even his new-Plato- 
nistic biographers. Porphyry and Jamblichus, have treated his 
life as a historico-philosophical romance. We have the same un- 
certainty in reference to his doctrines, i, e. in reference to his 
share in the number- theory. Aristotle, e. g. does not ascribe 
this to Pythagoras himself, but only to the Pythagoreans gene- 
rally, i. e, to their school. The accounts which are given respect- 
ing his school have no certainty till the time of Socrates, a hundred 
years after Pythagoras. Among the few sources of light which 
we have upon this subject, are the mention made in Plato's Phse- 
don of the Pythagorean Philolaus and his doctrines, and the 
writings of Archytas, a cotemporary of Plato. We possess in 
fact the Pythagorean doctrine only in the manner in which it was 
taken up by Philolaus, Eurytas and Archytas, since its earlier 
adherents left nothing in a written form. 

3. The Pythagorean Principle. — The ancients are united 
in affirming that the principle of the Pythagorean philosophy was 
number. But in what sense was this their principle — in a material 
or a formal sense ? Did they hold number as the material of 
things, i. e. did they believe that things had their origin in num- 
bers, or did they regard it as the archetype of things, i, e. did 
they believe that things were made as the copy or the representa- 
tion of numbers ? From this very point the accounts given by 
the ancients diverge, and even the expressions of Aristotle seem 
to contradict each other. At one time he speaks of Pythagorean- 



PYTHAGOREANISM. 25 

ism in the former, and at another in the latter sense. From this 
circumstance modern scholars have concluded that the Pytha- 
gorean doctrine of numbers had different forms of development ; 
that some of the Pythagoreans regarded numbers as the substances 
and others as the archetypes of things. Aristotle, however, 
gives an intimation how the two statements may be reconciled 
with each other. Originally, without doubt, the Pythagoreans 
regarded number as the material, as the inherent essence of 
things, and therefore Aristotle places them together with the 
Hylics (the Ionic natural philosophers), and says of them that 
^' they held things for numbers " {Meiaph. I., 5, 6). But as the 
Hylics did not identify their matter, e. g. water, immediately with 
the sensuous thing, but only gave it out as the fundamental ele- 
ment, as the original form of the individual thing, so, on the other 
side, numbers also might be regarded as similar fundamental types, 
and therefore Aristotle might say of the Pythagoreans, that 
" they held numbers to be the corresponding original forms of 
being, as water, air, &c." But if there still remains a degree of 
uncertainty in the expressions of Aristotle respecting the sense 
of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, it can only have its 
ground in the fact that the Pythagoreans did not make any dis- 
tinction between a formal and material principle, but contented 
themselves with the undeveloped view, that, " number is the essence 
of things, every thing is number." 

4. The carrying out of this Principle. — From the very 
nature of the '' number-principle," it follows that its complete ap- 
plication to the province of the real, can only lead to a fruitless 
and empty symbolism. If we take numbers as even and odd, and 
still farther as finite and infinite, and apply them as such to 
astronomy, music, psychology, ethics, &c., there arise combina- 
tions like the following, viz. : one is the point, two are the line, 
three are the superficies, four are the extension of a body, five 
are the condition (heschaffenheit)^ &c. — still farther, the soul is a 
musical harmony, as is also virtue, the soul of the world, &c. Not 
only the philosophical, but even the historical interest here ceases, 
since the ancients themselves — as was unavoidable from the 
2 



26 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

arbitrary nature of such combinations — ^have given the most con- 
tradictory account, some affirming that the Pythagoreans reduced 
righteousness to the number three, others, that they reduced it to 
the number four, others again to five, and still others to nine. 
Naturally, from such a vague and arbitrary philosophizing, there 
would early arise, in this, more than in other schools, a great 
diversity of views, one ascribing this signification to a certain 
mathematical form, and another that. In this mysticism of num- 
bers, that which alone has truth and value, is the thought, which 
lies at the ground of it all, that there prevails in the phenomena 
of nature a rational order, harmony and conformity to law, and 
that these laws of nature can be represented in measure and 
number. But this truth has the Pythagorean school hid under 
extravagant fancies, as vapid as they are unbridled. 

The physics of the Pythagoreans possesses little scientific 
value, with the exception of the doctrine taught by Philolaus 
respecting the circular motion of the earth. Their ethics is also 
defective. What we have remaining of it relates more to the 
Pythagorean life, i. e. to the practice and discipline of their order 
than to their philosophy. The whole tendency of Pythagoreanism 
was in a practical respect ascetic, and directed to a strict culture 
of the character. As showing this, we need only to cite their 
doctrines concerning the transmigration of the soul, or, as it has 
been called, their " immortality doctrine," their notion in respect 
of the lower world, their opposition to suicide, and their view of 
the body as the prison of the soul — all of which ideas are referred 
to in Plato's Phaedon, and the last two of which are indicated as 
belonging to Philolaus. 



THE ELEATICS. 27 



SECTION VI 

THE ELEATICS. 

1. Relation of the Eleatic Principle to the Pythago- 
rean. — While the Pythagoreans had made matter, in so far as it 
is quantity and the manifold, the basis of their philosophizing, 
and while in this they only abstracted from the determined ele- 
mental condition of matter, the Eleatics carry the process to its 
ultimate limit, and make, as the principle of their philosophy, a 
total abstraction from every finite determinateness, from every 
change and vicissitude which belongs to concrete being. While 
the Pythagoreans had held fast to the form of being as having 
existence in space and time, the Eleatics reject this, and make as 
their fundamental thought the negation of all exterior and pos- 
terior. Only being is, and there is no not-being, nor becoming. 
This being is the purely undetermined, changeless ground of all 
things. It is not being in becoming, but it is being as exclusive 
of all becoming ; in other words, it is pure being. 

Eleaticism is, therefore, Monism, in so far as it strove to 
carry back the manifoldness of all being to a single ultimate 
principle ; but on the other hand it becomes Dualism, in so far 
as it could neither carry out its denial of concrete existence, i. e., 
the phenomenal world, nor yet derive the latter from its presup- 
posed original ground. The phenomenal world, though it might 
be explained as only an empty appearance, did yet exist ; and, 
since the sensuous perception would not ignore this, there must 
be allowed it, hypothetically at least, the right of existence. Its 
origin must be explained, even though with reservations. This 
contradiction of an unreconciled Dualism between being and ex- 
istence, is the point where the Eleatic philosophy is at war with 
itself — though, in the beginning of the school — with XenophaneSy 
it does not yet appear. The principle itself, with its results, is 
only fully apparent in the lapse of time. It has three periods 



28 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



of formation, wliich successively appear in three successive gen- 
erations. Its foundation belongs to XenopJianes ; its systematic 
formation to Parmenides ; its completion and partial dissolution 
to Zeno and Melissus — the latter of whom we can pass by. 

2. Xenophanes. — Xenophanes is considered as the originator 
of the Eleatic tendency. He was born at Colophon ; emigrated 
to Elea, a Phocian colony in Lucania, and was a younger cotem- 
porary of Pythagoras. He appears to have first uttered the 
proposition — " every thing is one," without, however, giving any 
more explicit determination respecting this unity, whether it be 
one simply in conception or in actuality. Turning his attention, 
says Aristotle, upon the world as a whole, he names the unity 
which he finds, God. God is the One. The Eleatic " One and 
All " (ei/ Koi TTOLv) had, therefore, with Xenophanes, a theological 
and religious character. The idea of the unity of God, and an 
opposition to the anthropomorphism of the ordinary views of re- 
ligion, is his starting point. He declaimed against the delusion 
that the gods were born, that they had a human voice or form^ 
and railed at the robbery, adultery, and deceit of the gods as 
sung by Homer and Hesiod. According to him the Godhead is 
wholly seeing, wholly understanding, wholly hearing, unmoved, 
undivided, calmly ruling all things by his thought, like men 
neither in form nor in understanding. In this way, with his 
thought turned only towards removing from the Godhead all 
finite determinations and predicates, and holding fast to its unity 
and unchangeableness, he declared this doctrine of its being to 
be the highest philosophical principle, without however directing 
this principle polemically against the doctrine of finite being, or 
carrying it out in its negative application. 

3. Parmenides. — The proper head of the Eleatic school is 
Parmenides of Elea, a scholar, or at least an adherent of Xeno- 
phanes. Though we possess but little reliable information re- 
specting the circumstances of his life, yet we have, in inverse 
proportion, the harmonious voice of all antiquity in an expression 
of reverence for the Eleatic sage, and of admiration for the 
depth of his mind, as well as for the earnestness and elevation . 



THE ELEATICS. 29 

of his character. The saying — " a life like Parmenides," became 
afterwards a proverb among the G-reeks. 

Parmenides embodied his philosophy in an epic poem, of 
which we have still important fragments. It is divided into two 
parts. In the first he discusses the conception of being. Rising 
far above the yet unmediated view of Xenophanes, he attains a 
conception of pure single being, which he sets up as absolutely 
opposed to every thing manifold and changeable, i. e.j to that 
which has no being, and which consequently cannot be thought. 
From this conception of being he not only excludes all becoming 
and departing, but also all relation to space and time, all divisi- 
bility and movement. This being he explains as something 
which has not become and which does not depart, as complete 
and of its own kind, as unalterable and without limit, as indivisi- 
ble and present though not in time, and since all these are only 
negative, he ascribes to it, also, as a positive determination — 
thought. Being and thought are therefore identical with Par- 
menides. This pure thought, directed to the pure being, he de- 
clares is the only true and undeceptive knowledge, in opposition 
to the deceptive notions concerning the manifoldness and muta- 
bility of the phenomenal. He has no hesitancy in holding that 
to be only a name which mortals regard as truth, viz., becoming 
and departing, being and not-being, change of place and vicissi- 
tude of circumstance. "We must therefore be careful not to hold 
" the One " of Parmenides, as the collective unity of all concrete 
being. 

So much for the first part of Parmenides' poem. After the 
principle that there is only being has been developed according 
to its negative and positive determinations, we might believe that 
the system was at an end. But there follows a second part, 
which is occupied solely with the hypothetical attempt to explain 
the phenomenal world and give it a physical derivation. Though 
firmly convinced that, according to reason and conception, there 
is only '' the One," yet is Parmenides unable to withdraw him- 
self from the recognition of an appearing manifoldness and 
change. Forced, therefore, by his sensuous perception to enter 



30 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

upon a discussion of the phenomenal world, he prefaces this sec- 
ond part of his poem with the remark, that he had now closed 
what he had to say respecting the truth, and was hereafter to 
deal only with the opinion of a mortal. Unfortunately, this sec- 
ond part has been very imperfectly transmitted to us. Enough 
however remains to show, that he explained the phenomena of 
nature from the mingling of two unchangeable elements, which 
Aristotle, though apparently only by way of example, indicates 
as warm and cold, fire and earth. Concerning these two ele- 
ments, Aristotle remarks still farther that Parmenides united the 
warmth with being, and the other element with not-being. 

It is scarcely necessary to remark that between the two parts 
of the Parmenidean philosophy — between the doctrine concern- 
ing being and the doctrine concerning appearance — there can ex- 
ist no inner scientific connection. What Parmenides absolutely 
denies in the first part, and indeed declares to be unutterable, 
viz., the not-being, the many and the changeable, he yet in the 
second part admits to have an existence at least in the represen- 
tation of men. But it is clear that the not-being cannot once 
exist in the representation, if it does not exist generally and 
every where, and that the attempt to explain a not-being of the 
representation, is in complete contradiction with his exclusive 
recognition of being. This contradiction, this unmediated jux- 
taposition of being and not-being, of the one and the many, Zeno^ 
a scholar of Parmenides, sought to remove, by affirming that 
from the very conception of being, the sensuous representation, 
and thus the world of the not-being, are dialectically annihilated. 

4. Zeno. — The Eleatic Zeno was born about 500 B. C. ; was 
a scholar of Parmenides, and the earliest prose writer among the 
Grecian philosophers. He is said to have written in the form of 
dialogues. He perfected, dialectically, the doctrine of his mas- 
ter, and carried out to the completest extent the abstraction of 
the Eleatic One, in opposition to the manifoldness and determi- 
nateness of the finite. He justified the doctrine of a single, sim- 
ple, and unchangeable being, in a polemical way, by showing up 
the contradictions into which the ordinary representations of the 



HERACLITTJS. 31 

phenomenal world become involved. While Parmenides affirms 
that there is only the One, Zeno shows in his well-known proofs 
(which unfortunately we cannot here more widely unfold), that 
the many, the changing, that which has relation to space, or that 
which has relation to time, is not. While Parmenides affirmed 
the being, Zeno denied the appearance. On account of these 
proofs, in which Zeno takes up the conceptions of extension, 
manifoldness and movement, and shows their inner contradictory 
nature, Aristotle names him the founder of dialectics. 

While the philosophizing of Zeno is the completion of the 
Eleatic principle, so is it at the same time the beginning of its 
dissolution. Zeno had embraced the opposition of being and ex- 
istence, of the one and the many, so abstractly, and had carried 
it so far, that with him the inner contradiction of the Eleatic 
principle comes forth still more boldly than with Parmenides ; 
for the more logical he is in the denial of the phenomenal world, 
so much the more striking must be the contradiction, of turning, 
on the one side, his whole philosophical activity to the refutation 
of the sensuous representation, while, on the other side, he sets 
over against it a doctrine which destroys the very possibility of a 
false representation. 



SECTION VII. 

HERACLITUS. 

1. Relation of the Heraclitic Principle to the Ele- 
atic. — Being and existence, the one and the many, could not be 
united by the principle of the Eleatics ; the Monism which they 
had striven for had resulted in an ill-concealed Dualism. He- 
raclitus reconciled this contradiction by affirming that being and 
not-being, the one and the many, existed at the same time as the 
becoming. While the Eleatics could not extricate themselves 
from the dilemma that the world is either being or not-being, 



32 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Heraclitus removes the difficulty by answering — it is neither be- 
ing nor not-being, because it is both. 

2. Historical and Chronological. — Heraclitus, surnamed 
by later writers the mystic, was born at Ephesus, and flourished 
about 500 B. C. His period was subsequent to that of Xeno- 
phanes, though partially cotemporary with that of Parmenides. 
He laid down his philosophical thoughts in a writing " Concern- 
ing Nature," of which we possess only fragments. Its rapid 
transitions, its expressions so concise, and full of meaning, the 
general philosophical peculiarity of Heraclitus, and the antique 
character of the earliest prose writings, all combine to make this 
work so difficult to be understood that it has long been a proverb. 
Socrates said concerning it, that " what he understood of it was 
excellent, and he had no doubt that what he did not understand 
was equally good ; but the book requires an expert swimmer." 
Later Stoics and Academicians have written commentaries 
upon it. 

3. The Principle of the Becoming. — The ancients unite in 
ascribing to Heraclitus the principle that the totality of things 
should be conceived in an eternal flow, in an uninterrupted move- 
ment and transformation, and that all continuance of things is 
only appearance. " Into the same stream," so runs a saying of 
Heraclitus, ^^ we descend, and at the same time we do not de- 
scend; we are, and also we are not. For into the same stream 
we cannot possibly descend twice, since it is always scattering 
and collecting itself again, or rather it at the same time flows to 
us and from us." There is, therefore, ground for the assertion 
that Heraclitus had banished all rest and continuance from the 
totality of things ; and it is doubtless in this very respect that he 
accuses the eye and the ear of deception, because they reveal to 
men a continuance where there is only an uninterrupted change. 

Heraclitus has analyzed the principle of the becoming still 
more closely, in the propositions which he utters, to account for 
the origin of things, where he shows that all becoming must be 
conceived as the product of warring opposites, as the harmonious 
union of opposite determinations. Hence his two well-known 



HERACLITUS. 33 

propositions : " Strife is tlie father of things," and " The One 
setting itself at variance with itself, harmonizes with itself, like 
the harmony of the bow and the viol." ^' Unite," so runs another 
of his sayings, ^' the whole and the not- whole, the coalescing and 
the not-coalescing, the harmonious and the discordant, and thus 
we have the one becoming from the all, and the all from the 
one." 

4. The Principle op Fire. — In what relation does the prin- 
ciple of fire, which is also ascribed to Heraclitus, stand to the 
principle of the becoming ? Aristotle says that he took fire as 
his principle, in the same way that Thales took water, and Anax- 
imenes took air. But it is clear we must not interpret this to 
mean that Heraclitus regarded fire as the original material or 
fundamental element of things, after the manner of the Ionics. 
If he ascribed reality only to the becoming, it is impossible that 
he should have set by the side of this becoming, yet another ele- 
mental matter as a fundamental substance. When, therefore, 
Heraclitus calls the world an ever-living fire, which in certain 
stages and certain degrees extinguishes and again enkindles itself, 
when he says that every thing can be exchanged for fire, and fire 
for every thing, just as we barter things for gold and gold for 
things, he can only mean thereby that fire represetits the abiding 
power of this eternal transformation and transposition, in other 
words, the conception of life, in the most obvious and efiective 
way. We might name fire, in the Heraclitic sense, the symbol 
or the manifestation of the becoming, but that it is also with him 
the substratum of movement, i. e. the means with which the 
power of movement, which is antecedent to all matter, serves it 
self in order to bring out the living process of things. In the 
same way Heraclitus goes on to explain the manifoldness of 
things, by affirming that they arise from certain hindrances and 
a partial extinction of this fire. The product of its extremest 
hindrance is the earth, and the other things lie intermediately 
between. 

5. Transition to the Atomists. — We have above regarded 
the Heraclitic principle as the consequent of the Eleatic, but we 

2* 



34 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

might as properly consider the two as antitheses. While Hera- 
clitus destroys all abiding being in an absolutely flowing becoming, 
so, on the other hand, Parmenides destroys all becoming in an 
absolutely abiding being; and while the former charges the eye 
and the ear with deception, in that they transform the flowing 
becoming into a quiescent being, the latter also accuses these 
same senses of an untrue representation, in that they draw the 
abiding being into the movement of the becoming. We can 
therefore say that the being and the becoming are equally valid 
antitheses, which demand again a synthesis and reconciliation 
But now can we say that Heraclitus actually and satisfactoriljr 
solved the problem of Zeno ? Zeno had shown every thing actual 
to be a contradiction, and from this had inferred their not-being| 
and it is only in this inference that Heraclitus deviates from the 
Eleatics. He also regarded the phenomenal world as an existing 
contradiction, but he clung to this contradiction as to an ultimate 
fact. That which had been the negative result of the Eleatics, 
he uttered as his positive principle. The dialectics which Zeno 
had subjectively used against the phenomenal, he directed objec- 
tively as a proof for the becoming. But this becoming which the 
Eleatics had thought themselves obliged to deny entirely, Hera- 
clitus did not explain by simply asserting that it was the only 
true principle. The question continually returned — why is all 
being a becoming? Why does the one go out ever into the 
many ? To give an answer to this question, i. e. to explain the 
becoming from the pre-supposed principle of being, forms the 
stand-point and problem of the Emyedoclean and Aiomistic 
philosophy. 



EMPEDOCLES. 35 

SECTION VIII. 

EMPEDOCLES. 

1. G-ENERAL View. — Empedocles was born at Agrigentum, 
and is extolled by the ancients as a natural pbilosopber, physician 
and poet, and also as a seer and worker of miracles. He flourished 
about 440 B. C, and was consequently younger than Parmenides 
and Heraclitus. He wrote a doctrinal poem concerning nature, 
which has been preserved to us in tolerably complete fragments. 
His philosophical system may be characterized in brief, as an 
attempt to combine the Eleatic being and the Heraclitic becom- 
ing. Starting with the Eleatic thought, that neither any thing 
which had previously been could become, nor any thing which 
now is could depart, he sets up as unchangeable being, four 
eternal original materials, which, though divisible, were indepen- 
dent, and underived from each other. In this we have what in 
our day are called the four elements. With this Eleatic thought 
he united also the Heraclitic view of nature, and suffered his four 
elements to become mingled together, and to receive a form by 
the working of two moving powers, which he names unifying 
friendship and dividing strife. Originally, these four elements 
were absolutely alike and unmovable, dwelling together in a di- 
vine sphere where friendship united them, until gradually strife 
pressing from the circumference to the centre of the sphere {i. e: 
attaining a separating activity), broke this union, and the forma- 
tion of the world immediately began as the result. 

2. The Four Elements. — With his doctrine of the four ele- 
ments, Empedocles, on the one side, may be joined to the series 
of the Ionic philosophers, but, on the other, he is excluded from 
this by his assuming the original elements to be four. He is dis- 
tinctly said by the ancients to have originated the theory of the 
four elements. He is more definitely distinguished from the old 
Ionics, from the fact that he ascribed to his four " root-elements" 
a changeless being, by virtue of which they neither arose from 



36 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 

each other nor departed into each other, and were capable of no 
change of essence but only of a change of state. Every thing 
which is called arising and departing, every change rests there- 
fore only upon the mingling and withdrawing of these eternal and 
fundamental materials ; the inexhaustible manifoldness of being 
rests upon the different proportions in which these elements are 
mingled. Every becoming is conceived as such only as a change 
of place. In this we have a mechanical in opposition to a dynamic 
explanation of nature. 

3. The Two Powers. — Whence now can arise any becomin g^ i 
if in matter itself there is found no principle to account for the' 
change? Since Empedocles did not, like the Eleatics, deny that 
there was change, nor yet, like Heraclitus, introduce it in hij 
matter, as an indwelling principle, so there was no other course 
left him but to place, by the side of his matter, a moving powerj 
The opposition of the one and the many which had been set up bj 
his predecessors, and which demanded an explanation, led him to 
ascribe to this moving power, two originally diverse directions, 
viz. : repulsion and attraction. The separation of the one inta 
the many, and the union again of the many into the one, had in- 
dicated an opposition of powers which Heraclitus had already* 
recognized. While now Parmenides starting from the one had 
made love as his principle, and Heraclitus starting from the many 
had made strife as his, Empedocles combines the two as the prin- 
ciple of his philosophy. The difficulty is, he has not sufficiently 
limited in respect to one another, the sphere of operation of these 
two directions of his power. Although to friendship belonged 
peculiarly the attractive, and to strife the repelling function, yet 
does Empedocles, on the other hand, suffer his strife to have in 
the formation of the world a unifying, and his friendship a dividing 
effect. In fact, the complete separation of a dividing and unify- 
ing power in the movement of the becoming, is an unmaintainable 
abstraction. 

4. Relation of the Empedoclean to the Eleatic and 
Heraclitic Philosophy. — Empedocles, by placing, as the prin- 
ciple of the becoming, a moving power by the side of his matter, 



THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 37 

makes his philosophy a mediation of the Eleatic and Heraclitic 
principles, or more properly a placing of them side by side. He 
has interwoven these two principles in equal proportions in his 
system. With the Eleatics he denied all arising and departing, 
i. e, the transition of being into not-being and of not-being into 
being, and with Heraclitus he shared the interest to find an ex- 
planation for change. From the former he derived the abiding, 
unchangeable being of his fundamental matter, and from the latter 
the principle of the moving power. With the Eleatics, in fine, he 
considered the true being in an original and undistinguishable 
unity as a sphere, and with Heraclitus, he regarded the present 
world as a constant product of striving powers and oppositions. 
He has, therefore, been properly called an Eclectic, who has 
united the fundamental thoughts of his two predecessors, though 
not always in a logical way. 



/ 



. SECTION IX. 

THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 

1. Its Propounders. — Empedocles had sought to effect a 
combination of the Eleatic and Heraclitic principle — the same 
was attempted, though in a different way, by the Atomists, Leu- 
oippus and Democritus. Democritus, the better known of the 
two, was the son of rich parents, and was born about 460 B. C. in 
Abdera, an Ionian colony. He travelled extensively, and no 
Greek before the time of Aristotle possessed such varied attain- 
ments. He embodied the wealth of his collected knowledge in a 
series of writings, of which, however, only a few fragments have 
come down to us. For rhythm and elegance of language, Cicero 
compared him with Plato. He died in a good old age. 

2. The Atoms. — Empedocles derived all determinateness of 
the phenomenal from a certain number of qualitatively determined 
and undistinguishable original materials, while the Atomists de- 



38 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



■ 



rived the same from an originally unlimited number of constituent 
elements, or atoms, which were homogeneous in respect of quality, 
but diverse in respect of form. These atoms are unchangeable, 
material particles, possessing indeed extension, but yet indivisible, 
and can only be determined in respect of magnitude. As being, 
and without quality, they are entirely incapable of any transfor- 
mation or qualitative change, and, therefore, all becoming is, as 
with Empedocles, only a change of place. The manifoldness of 
the phenomenal world is only to be explained from the different 
form, disposition, and arrangement of the atoms as they become, 
in various ways, united. 

3. The Fulness and the Void. — The atoms, in order to 
be atoms, i. e. undivided and impenetrable unities, — must be 
mutually limited and separated. There must be something set 
over against them which preserves them as atoms, and which is 
the original cause of their separateness and impenetrability. This 
is the void space, or more strictly the intervals which are found 
between the atoms, and which hinder their mutual contact. The 
atoms, as being and absolute fulness, and the interval between 
them, as the void and the not-being, are two determinations which 
only represent in a real and objective way, what are in thought, 
as logical conceptions, the two elements in the Heraclitic becom-' 
ing, viz. being and the not-being. But since the void space is one 
determination of being, it must possess objective reality no less 
than the atoms, and Democritus even went so far as to expressly 
affirm in opposition to the Eleatics, that being is no more than 
nothing. 

4. The Atomistic Necessity. — Democritus, like Empedocles, 
though far more extensively than he, attempted to answer the 
question — whence arise these changes and movements which we 
behold ? Wherein lies the ground that the atoms should enter 
into these manifold combinations, and bring forth such a wealth 
of inorganic and organic forms ? Democritus attempted to solve 
the problem by affirming that the ground of movement lay in the 
gravity or original condition of the material particles, and, there- 
fore, in the matter itself, but in this way he only talked about the 



d 



THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 39 

question without answering it. The idea of an infinite series of 
causalities was thus attained, but not a final ground of all the 
manifestations of the becoming, and of change. Such a final 
ground was still to be sought, and as Democritus expressly de- 
clared that it could not lie in an ultimate reason {vovs), where 
Anaxagoras placed it, there only remained for him to find it in an 
absolute necessity, or a necessary pre-determinateness (avdyKr]). 
This he adopted as his '^ final ground," and is said to have named 
it chance {tvxv)) i^ opposition to the inquiry after final causes, or 
the Anaxagorean teleology. Consequent upon this, we find as the 
prominent characteristic of the later Atomistic school (Diagoras 
the Melier), polemics against the gods of the people, and a con- 
stantly more publicly affirmed Atheism and Materialism. 

5. Relative Position of the Atomistic Philosophy. — He- 
gel characterizes the relative position of the Atomistic Philosophy 
as follows, viz. : — " In the Eleatic Philosophy being and not-being 
stand as antitheses, — being alone is, and not-being is not ; in the 
Heraclitic idea, being and not-being are the same, — ^both together, 
i, e. the becoming, are the predicate of concrete being ; but being 
and not-being, as objectively determined, or in other words, as 
appearing to the sensuous intuition, are precisely the same as the 
antithesis of the fulness and the void. Parmenides, Heraclitus 
and the Atomists all sought for the abstract universal ; Parme- 
nides found it in being, Heraclitus in the process of being per se, 
and the Atomists in the determination of being per se^ So 
much of this as ascribes to the Atomists the characteristic predi- 
cate of being per se is doubtless correct,^ — ^but the real thought 
of the Atomistic system is rather analogous with the Empedoc- 
lean, to explain the possibility of the becoming, by presupposing 
these substances as possessing being per se, but without quality. 
To this end the not-being or the void, i. e, the side which is op- 
posed to the Eleatic principle, is elaborated with no less care than 
the side which harmonizes with it, i. e. that the atoms are without 
quality and never change in their original elements. The Atom- 
istic Philosophy is therefore a mediation between the Eleatic and 
the Heraclitic principles. It is Eleatic in affirming the undivided 



40 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 

being per se of the atoms ; — Heraclitie, in declaring their mul- 
teity and manifoldness. It is Eleatic in the declaration of an 
absolute fulness in the atoms, and Heraclitie in the claim of a 
real not-being, i, e. the void space. It is Eleatic in its denial of 
the becoming, i, e. of the arising and departing, — and Heraclitie 
in its affirmation that to the atoms belong movement and a capa- 
city for unlimited combinations. The Atomists carried out their 
leading thought more logically than Empedocles, and we might 
even say that their system is the perfection of a purely mechanical 
explanation of nature, since all subsequent Atomists, even to our 
own day, have only repeated their fundamental conceptions. But 
the great defect which cleaves to every Atomistic system, Aris- 
totle has justly recognized, when he shows that it is a contradic- 
tion, on the one hand, to set up something corporeal or space-filling 
as indivisible, and on the other, to derive the extended from that, 
which has no extension, and that the consciousless and inconceiv- 
able necessity of Democritus is especially defective, in that it 
totally banishes from nature all conception of design. This is 
the point to which Anaxagoras turns his attention, and introduces, 
his principle of an intelligence working with design. 



SECTION X. 

ANAXAGOKAS. 

1. His Personal History. — Anaxagoras is said to have been 
born at Clazamena, about the year 500 B. C. ; to have gone to 
Athens immediately, or soon after the Persian war, to have lived 
and taught there for a long time, and, finally, accused of irreve- 
rence to the gods, to have fled, and died at Lampsacus, at the age 
of 72. He it was who first planted philosophy at Athens, which 
from this time on became the centre of intellectual life in Greece. 
Through his personal relations to Pericles, Euripides, and other 
important men, — among whom Themistocles and Thucydides 



ANAXAGORAS. 41 

should be named — ^he exerted a decisive influence upon the cul- 
ture of the age. It was on account of this that the charge of 
defaming the gods was brought against him, doubtless by the 
political opponents of Pericles. Anaxagoras wrote a work '' Con- 
cerning Nature^'''' which in the time of Socrates was widely circu- 
lated. 

2. His Relation to his Predecessors.— The system of An- 
axagoras starts from the same point with his predecessors, and is 
simply another attempt at the^ solution of the same problem. 
Like Empedocles and the Atomists so did Anaxagoras most vehe- 
mently deny the becoming. ^' The becoming and departing," — so 
runs one of his sayings — " the Greeks hold without foundation, 
for nothing can ever be said to become or depart ; but, since ex- 
isting things may be compounded together and again divided, we 
should name the becoming more correctly a combination, and the 
departing a separation. From this view, that every thing arose by 
the mingling of different elements, and departed by the withdraw- 
ing of these elements, Anaxagoras, like his predecessors, was 
obliged to separate matter from the moving power. But though 
his point of starting was the same, yet was his direction essen- 
tially different from that of any previous philosopher. It was 
clear that neither Empedocles nor Democritus had satisfactorily 
apprehended the moving power. The mythical energies of love 
and hate of the one, or the unconscious necessity of the other, 
explained nothing, and least of all, the design of the becoming 
in nature. The conception of an activity which could thus work 
designedly, must, therefore, be brought into the conception of 
the moving power, and this Anaxagoras accomplished by setting 
up the idea of a world-forming intelligence (roi}s), absolutely sepa- 
rated from all matter and working with design. 

3. The Principle of the vov^, — Anaxagoras described this 
intelligence as free to dispose, unmingled with any thing, the 
ground of movement, but itself unmoved, every where active, and 
the most refined and pure of all things. Although these predi- 
cates rest partly upon a physical analogy, and do not exhibit 
purely the conception of immateriality, yet on the other hand 



42 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

does the attribute of thought and of a conscious acting with de- 
sign admit no doubt to remain of the decided idealistic character 
of the Anaxagorean principle. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras went 
no farther than to enunciate his fundamental thought without 
attempting its complete application. The explanation of this is 
obvious from the reasons which first led him to adopt his princi- 
ple. It was only the need of an original cause of motion, to 
which also might be attributed the capacity to work designedly, 
which had led him to the idea of an immaterial principle. His 
I vovsj therefore, is almost nothing but a mover of matter, and in 
ithis function nearly all its activity is expended. Hence the imi- 
versal complaint of the ancients, especially of Plato and Aris- 
totle, respecting the mechanical character of his doctrine. In 
Plato's Ph^edon Socrates relates that, in the hope of being 
directed beyond a simple occasioning, or mediate cause, he had 
turned to the book of Anaxagoras, but had founS there only a 
mechanical instead of a truly teleological explanation of being. 
And as Plato so also does Aristotle find fault with Anaxagoras in 
that, while he admits mind as the ultimate ground of things, he 
yet resorts to it only as to a Deus ex machina for the explanation 
of phenomena, whose necessity he could not derive from the 
causality in nature. Anaxagoras, therefore, has rather postulated 
than proved mind as an energy above nature, and as the truth and 
actuality of natural being. 

The further extension of his system, his doctrine concerning 
the homoiomeria (constituent elements of things), which according 
to him existed together originally in a chaotic condition until with 
their separation and parting the formation of the world began- 
can here only be mentioned. 

4. Anaxagoras as the close of the pre-Socratic Real- 
IS5I. — With the Anaxagorean principle of the vovs, i. e. with the 
acquisition of an absolutely immaterial principle, closes the real- 
istic period of the old Grecian Philosophy. Anaxagoras com- 
bined together the principles of all his predecessors. The infinite 
matter of the Hylics is represented in his chaotic original ming- 
ling of things ; the Eleatic pure being appears in the idea of the 



THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 43 

vovs] the Heraclitic power of becoming and tlie Empedoclean 
moving energies are both seen in the creating and arranging power 
of the eternal mind, while the Democritic atoms come to view in 
the homoiomeria. Anaxagoras is the closing point of an old and 
the beginning point of a new course of development, — the latter 
through the setting up of his ideal principle, and the former 
through the defective and completely physical manner in which 
this principle was yet again applied. 



SECTION XI. 

THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 

1. Relation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Anaxa- 
GOREAN Principle. — Anaxagoras had formed the conception of 
mind, and in this had recognized thought as a power above the 
objective world. Upon this newly conquered field the Sophistic 
philosophy now began its gambols, and with childish wantonness 
delighted itself in setting at work this power, and in destroying, by 
means of a subjective dialectic, all objective determinations. The 
Sophistic philosophy — though of far more significance from its 
relation to the culture of the age than from its philosophy — ^had 
for its starting principle the breach which Anaxagoras had com- 
menced between the subjective and the objective, — the Ego and 
the external world. The subject, after recognizing himself as 
something higher than the objective world, and especially as some- 
thing above the laws of the state, above custom and religious 
tradition and the popular faith, in the next place attempted to 
prescribe laws for this objective world, and instead of beholding 
in it the historical manifestation of reason, he looked upon it only 
as an exanimated matter, upon which he might exercise his will. 

The Sophistic philosophy should be characterized as the clear- 
ing up reflection. It is, therefore, no philosophical system, for its 
doctrines and affirmations exhibit often so popular and even trivial 



44 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



a character that for their own sake they would merit no place at 
all in the history of philosophy. It is also no philosophical school 
in the ordinary sense of the term, — for Plato cites a vast number 
of persons under the common name of " Sophists," — but it is an 
intellectual and widely spread direction of the age, which had struck 
its roots into the whole moral, political, and religious character 
of the Athenian life of that time, and which may be called the 
Athenian clearing up period. 

2. Relation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Univer- 
sal Life of that Age. — The Sophistic philosophy is, theoreti- 
cally, what the whole Athenian life during the Peloponnesian war 
was practically. Plato justly remarks in his Republic that the 
doctrines of the Sophists only expressed the very principles which 
guided the course of the great mass of men of that time in their 
civil and social relations, and the hatred with which they were 
pursued by the practical statesmen, clearly indicates the jealousy 
with which the latter saw in them their rivals and the destroyers 
of their polity. If the absoluteness of the empirical subject — i. e, 
the view that the individual Ego can arbitrarily determine what 
is true, right and good, — is in fact the theoretical principle of the 
Sophistic philosophy, so does this in a practical direction, as an 
unlimited Egoism meet us in all the spheres of the public and 
private life of that age. The public life had become an arena of 
passion and selfishness ; those party struggles which racked Athens 
during the Peloponnesian war had blunted and stifled the moral 
feeling ; every individual accustomed himself to set up his own 
private interest above that of the state and the common weal, and 
to seek in his own arbitrariness and advantage the measuring rod 
for all his actions. The Protagorean sentence that ^' the man is 
the measure of all things " became practically carried out only 
too faithfully, and the influence of the orator in the assemblies of 
the people and the courts, the corruptibility of the great masses 
and their leaders, and the weak points which showed to the adroit 
student of human nature the covetousness, vanity, and factious- 
ness of others around him, ofi'ered only too many opportunities to 
bring this rule into practice. Custom had lost its weight ; the 



THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 45 

laws were regarded as only an agreement of the majority, tlie 
civil ordinance as an arbitrary restriction, the moral feeling as the 
effect of the policy of the state in education, the faith in the gods 
as a human invention to intimidate the free power of action, 
while piety was looked upon as a statute which some men have 
enacted and which every one else is justified in using all his elo- 
quence to change. This degradation of a necessity, which is con- 
formable to nature and reason, and which is of uni verbal validity, 
— to an accidental human ordinance, is chiefly the point in which 
the Sophistic philosophy came in contact with the universal con- 
sciousness of the educated class of that period, and we cannot 
with certainty determine what share science and what share the 
life may have had in this connection, — whether the Sophistic 
philosophy found only the theoretical formula for the practical 
life and tendencies of the age, or whether the moral corruption 
was rather a consequence of that destructive influence which the 
principles of the Sophists exerted upon the whole course of 
cotemporaneous thought. 

It would be, however, to mistake the spirit of history if we 
were only to bewail the epoch of the Sophists instead of admitting 
for it a relative justification. These phenomena were in part the 
necessary product of the collective development of the age. The 
faith in the popular religion fell so suddenly to the ground simply 
because it possessed in itself no inner, moral support. The 
grossest vices and acts of baseness could all be justified and ex- 
cused from the examples of mythology. Even Plato himself, 
though otherwise an advocate of a devout faith in the traditional 
religion, accuses the poets of his nation with leading the very 
moral feeling astray, through the unworthy representations which 
they had spread abroad concerning the gods and the hero world. 
It was moreover unavoidable that the advancing science should 
clash with tradition. The physical philosophers had already long 
lived in open hostility to the popular religion, and the more con- 
vincingly they demonstrated by analogies and laws that many 
things which had hitherto been regarded as the immediate effect 
of Divine omnipotence, were only the results of natural causes, 



46 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SO mucli the more easily would it happen that the educated classes 
would become perplexed in reference to all their previous convic- 
tions. It was no wonder then that the transformed consciousness 
of the time should penetrate all the provinces of art and poesy ; 
that in sculpture, wholly analogous to the rhetoric art of the 
Sophistic philosophy, the emotive should occupy the place of the 
elevated style ; that Euripides, the sophist among tragedians, 
should bring the whole philosophy of the time and its manner of 
moral reflection upon the stage ; and that, instead of like the 
earlier poets, bringing forward his actors to represent an idea, he 
should use them only as means to excite a momentary emotion or 
some other stage eflfeot. 

3. Tendencies of the Sophistic Philosophy. — To give a 
definite classification of the Sophistic philosophy, which should 
be derived from the conception of the general phenomena of the 
age, is exceedingly difficult, since, like the French " clearing up " 
of the last century, it entered into every department of knowledge. 
jThe Sophists directed the universal culture of the time. Prota- 
goras was known as a teacher of virtue, Gorgias as a rhetorician 
and politician, Prodicus as a grammarian and teacher of syn- 
onyms, Hippias as a man of various attainments, who besides 
astronomical and mathematical studies busied himself with a 
theory of mnemonics ; others took for their problem the art of 
education, and others still the explanation of the old poets ; the 
brothers Euthydemus and Dionysidorus gave instruction in the 
bearing of arms and military tactics; many among them, as 
Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias, were intrusted with embassies : 
in short the Sophists, each one according to his individual ten- 
dency, took upon themselves every variety of calling and entered 
into every sphere of science ; their method is the only thing com- 
mon to all. Moreover the relation of the Sophists to the educated 
public, their striving after popularity, fame and money, disclose 
the fact that their studies and occupations were for the most part 
controlled, not by a subjective scientific interest, but by some ex- 
ternal motive. With that roving spirit which was an essential 
peculiarity of the later Sophists, travelling from city to city, and 



THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 47 

announcing themselves as thinkers by profession — and giving their 
instructions with prominent reference to a good recompense and 
the favor of the rich private classes, it was very natural that they 
should discourse upon the prominent questions of universal inter- 
est and of public culture, with occasional reference also to the 
favorite occupation of this or that rich man with whom they 
might be brought in contact. Hence their peculiar strength lay 
far more in a formal dexterity, in an acuteness of thought and a 
capacity of bringing it readily into exercise, in the art of discourse 
than in any positive knowledge ; their instruction in virtue was 
given either in positive dogmatism or in empty bombast, and even 
where the Sophistic philosophy became really polymathic, the art 
of speech still remained as the great thing. So we find in Xeno- 
phon, Hippias boasting that he can speak repeatedly upon every 
subject and say something new each time, while we hear it ex- 
pressly affirmed of others, that they had no need of positive 
knowledge in order to discourse satisfactorily upon every thing, 
and to answer every question extemporaneously ; and when many 
Sophists make it a great point to hold a well-arranged discourse 
about something of the least possible significance {e, g. salt), so 
do we see that with them the thing was only a means while the 
word was the end, and we ought not to be surprised that in this 
respect the Sophistic philosophy sunk to that empty technicality 
which Plato in his Phasdrus, on account of its want of character, 
subjects to so rigid a criticism. 

4. The Significance of the Sophistic Philosophy fp^om its 
RELATION TO THE CuLTURE OF THE Age. — The Scientific and moral 
defect of the Sophistic philosophy is at first view obvious ; and, 
since certain modern writers of history with over-officious zeal 
have painted its dark sides in black, and raised an earnest accu- 
sation against its frivolity, immorality, and greediness for pleasure, 
its conceitedness and selfishness, and bare appearance of wisdom 
and art of dispute — it needs here no farther elucidation. But the 
point in it most apt to be overlooked is the merit of the Sophists 
in their effect upon the culture of the age. To say, as is done, 
that they had only the negative merit of calling out the opposi- 



48 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion of Socrates and Plato, is to leave the immense influence and 
the high fame of so many among them, as well as the revolution 
which they brought about in the thinking of a whole nation, an 
inexplicable phenomenon. It were inexplicable that e. g. Socrates 
should attend the lectures of Prodicus, and direct to him other - , 
students, if he did not acknowledge the worth of his grammatical! t 
performances or recognize his merit for the soundness of his logic. 
Moreover, it cannot be denied that Protagoras has hit upon many 
correct principles of rhetoric, and has satisfactorily established 
certain grammatical categories. Generally may it be said of the 
Sophists, that they threw among the people a fulness in every 
department of knowledge ; that they strewed about them a vast 
number of fruitful germs of development ; that they called out 
investigations in the theory of knowledge, in logic and in lan- 
guage ; that they laid the basis for the methodical treatment of 
many branches of human knowledge, and that they partly founded 
and partly called forth that wonderful intellectual activity which 
characterized Athens at that time. Their greatest merit is their 
service in the department of language. They may even be said 
to have created and formed the Attic prose. They are the first 
who made style as such a separate object of attention and study, 
and who set about rigid investigations respecting number and the 
art of rhetorical representation. With them Athenian eloquence, 
which they first incited, begins. Antiphon as well as Isocrates — 
the latter the founder of the most flourishing school of Greek 
rhetoric — are ofi'shoots of the Sophistic philosophy. In all this 
there is ground enough to regard this whole phenomenon as not 
barely a symptom of decay. 

5. Individual Sophists. — The first, who is said to have been 
called, in the received sense, Sophist, is Protagoras of Abdera, 
who flourished about 440 b. c. He taught, and for wages, in 
Sicily and in Athens, but was driven out of the latter place as a 
reviler of the gods, and his book concerning the gods was burnt 
by the herald in the public market-place. It began with these 
words : " I can know nothing concerning the gods, whether they 
exist or not; for we are prevented from gaining such knowledge 



THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 49 

not only by the obscurity of the thing itself, but by the shortness 
of the human life." In another writing he develops his doctrine 
concerning knowing or not-knowing. Starting from the Heraclitic 
position that every thing is in a constant flow, and applying this 
preeminently to the thinking subject, he taught that the man is 
the measure of all things, who determines in respect of being that 
it may be, and of not-being that it may not be, i, e, that is true 
for the perceiving subject which he, in the constant movement of 
things and of himself, at every moment perceives and is sensible 
of — and hence he has theoretically no other relation to the ex- 
ternal world than the sensuous apprehension, and practically no 
other than the sensuous desire. But now, since perception and 
sensation are as diverse as the subjects themselves, and are in the 
highest degree variable in the very same subject, there follows the 
farther result that nothing has an objective validity and deter- 
mination, that contradictory affirmations in reference to the same 
object must be received as alike true, and that error and contra- 
diction cannot be. Protagoras does not seem to have made any 
efforts to give these frivolous propositions a practical and logical 
application. According to the testimony of the ancients, a per- 
sonal character worthy of esteem, cannot be denied him ; and even 
Plato, in the dialogue which bears his name, goes no farther than 
to object to his complete obscurity respecting the nature of 
morality, while, in his Gorgias and Philebus, he charges the later 
Sophists with affirming the principles of immorality and moral 
baseness. 

Next to Protagoras, the most famous Sophist was Gorgias. 
During the Peloponnesian war (426 b. c), he came from Leontium 
4 to Athens in order to gain assistance for his native city against the 
encroachments of Syracuse. After the successful accomplishment 
of his errand he still abode for some time in Athens, but resided 
the latter part of his life in Thessaly, where he died about the 
same time with Socrates. The pompous ostentation of his ex- 
ternal appearance is often ridiculed by Plato, and the discourses 
through which he was wont to exhibit himself display the same 
character, attempting, through poetical ornament, and florid 



50 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

metaphors, and uncommon words, and a mass of hitherto unheard 
of figures of speech, to dazzle and delude the mind. As a phi- 
losopher he adhered to the Eleatics, especially to Zeno, and 
attempts to prove upon the basis of their dialectic schematism, 
that universally nothing is, or if there could be a being, it would 
not be cognizable, or if cognizable it would not be communicable. 
Hence his writing bore characteristically enough the title — " Con- 
cerning Not-being or Nature.^'* The proof of the first proposition 
that universally nothing is, since it can be established neither as 
being nor as not-being, nor yet as at the same time both being 
and not-being, rests entirely upon the position that all existence 
is a space-filling existence (has place and body), and is in fact 
the final consequence which overturns itself, in other words the 
self-destruction of the hitherto physical method of philosophizing. 
The later Sophists with reckless daring carried their conclu 
sions far beyond Gorgias and Protagoras. They were for the 
most part free thinkers, wbo pulled to the ground the religion, 
laws, and customs of their birth. Among these should be named, 
prominently, the tyrant Critias, Polus, Callicles, and Thrasy- 
machus. The two latter openly taught the right of the stronger 
as the law of nature, the unbridled satisfaction of desire as the 
natural right of the stronger, and the setting up of restraining 
laws as a crafty invention of the weaker ; and Critias, the most 
talented but the most abandoned of the thirty tyrants, wrote a 
poem, in which he represented the faith in the gods as an invention 
of crafty statesmen. Hippias of Elis, a man of great knowledge, 
bore an honorable character, although he did not fall behind the 
rest in bombast and boasting; but before all, was Prodicus, in 
reference to whom it became a proverb to say — " as wise as Pro- 
dicus," and concerning whom Plato himself and even Aristophanes 
never spoke without veneration. Especially famous among the 
ancients were his parenetical (persuasive) lectures concerning the 
choice of a mode of life (Xenophon's Memorabilia, II. 1), con- 
cerning external good and its use, concerning life and death, &c., 
discourses in which he manifests a refined moral feeling, and his 
observation of life ; although through the want of a higher ethical 



THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 51 

and scientific principle, lie must be placed behind Socrates, whose 
forerunner he has been called. The later generations of Sophists, 
as they are shown in the Euthydemus of Plato, sink to a common 
level of buffoonery and disgraceful strife for gain, and comprise 
their whole dialectic art in certain formulae for entangling 
fallacies. 

6. Transition to Socrates and Characteristic of the fol- 
lowing Period. — That which is true in the Sophistic philosophy , 
is the truth of the subjectivity, of the self-consciousness, i, e. the » 
demand that every thing which I am to admit must be shown as 
rational before my own consciousness — that which is false in it is j 
its apprehension of this subjectivity as nothing farther than finite, ; 
empirical egoistic subjectivity, i. e, the demand that my accidental ' 
will and opinion should determine what is rational ; its truth is 
that it set up the principle of freedom, of self- certainty ; its un- 
truth is that it established the accidental will and notion of the ' 
individual upon the throne. To carry out now the principle of 
freedom and self-consciousness to its truth, to gain a true world 
of objective thought with a real and distinct content, by the same 
means of reflection which the Sophists had only used to destroy it, 
to establish the objective will, the rational thinking, the absolute or 
ideal in the place of the empirical subjectivity was the problem of 
the next advent in philosophy, the problem which Socrates took 
up and solved. To make the absolute or ideal subjectivity instead 
of the empirical for a principle, is to affirm that the true measure 
of all things is not my {i. e. the individual person's) opinion, 
fancy and will ; that what is true, right and good, does not de- 
pend upon my caprice and arbitrary determination, or upon that 
of any other empirical subject ; but while it is my thinking, it is \ 
my thinking J the rational within me, which has to decide upon all 
these points. But my thinking, my reason, is not something 
specially belonging to me, but something common to every rational 
being; something universal, and in so far as I am a rational and 
thinking being, is my subjectivity a universal one. But every think- 
ing individual has the consciousness that what he holds as right, 
as duty, as good or evil, does not appear as such to him alone but 



52 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to every rational being, and that consequently his thinking has 
the character of universality, of universal validity, in a word — of 
objectivity. This then in opposition to the Sophistic philosophy 
is the stand-point of Socrates, and therefore with him the phi- 
losophy of ohjective thought begins. What Socrates could do in 
opposition to the Sophists was to show that reflection led to the 
same results as faith or obedience, hitherto without reflection, 
had done, and that the thinking man guided by his free conscious- 
ness and his own conviction, would learn to form the same judg- 
ments and take the same course to which life and custom had 
already and unconsciously induced the ordinary man. The posi- 
tion, that while the man is the measure of all things, it is the 
man as universal, as thinking, as rational, is the fundamental 
thought of the Socratic philosophy, which is, by virtue of this 
thought, the positive complement of the Sophistic principle. 

With Socrates begins the second period of the Grecian philoso- 
phy. This period contains three philosophical systems, whose 
authors, standing to each other in the personal relation of teacher 
and pupil, represent three successive generations,— Socrates, 
Plato, Aristotle. 



SECTION XII. 

SOCRATES.'^' 

1. His Personal Character. — The new philosophical princi* 
pie appears in the personal character of Socrates. His philosophy 
is his mode of acting as an individual ; his life and doctrine can* 
not be separated. His biography, therefore, forms the only com- 
plete representation of his philosophy, and what the narrative of 
Xeuophon presents us as the definite doctrine of Socrates, is con- 
sequently nothing but an abstract of his inward character, as 

* The article on Socrates, from page 52 to page G4, was translated by 
Prof. N. G. Clark, of the University of Vermont. 



SOCRATES. 53 

it found expression from time to time in his conversation. Plato 
yet more regarded his master as such an archetypal personality, 
and a luminous exhibition of the historical Socrates is the special 
object of his later and maturer dialogues, and of these again, the 
Symposium is the most brilliant apotheosis of the Eros incarnated 
in the person of Socrates, of the philosophical impulse transformed 
into character. 

Socrates was born in the year 469 B. C, the son of Sophro- 
niscus, a sculptor, and Phaenarete, a midwife. In his youth he was 
trained by his father to follow his own profession, and in this he 
is said not to have been without skill. Three draped figures of 
the G-races, called the work of Socrates, were seen by Pausanias, 
upon the Akropolis. Little farther is known of his education. 
He may have profited by the instruction of Prodicus and the 
musician, Damon, but he stood in no personal connection with the 
proper philosophers, who flourished before, or cotemporaneously 
with him. He became what he was by himself alone, and just 
for this reason does he form an era in the old philosophy. If the 
ancients call him a scholar of Anaxagoras, or of the natural phi- 
losopher, Archelaus, the first is demonstrably false, and the second, 
to say the least, is altogether improbable. He never sought other 
means of culture than those afforded in his native city. With 
the exception of one journey to a public festival, the military 
campaigns which led him as far as Potidaea, Delion, and Amphi- 
polis, he never left Athens. 

The period when Socrates first began to devote himself to 
the education of youth, can be determined only approximately 
from the time of the first representation of the Clouds of Aristo- 
phanes, which was in the year 423. The date of the Delphio 
oracle, which pronounced him the wisest of men, is not known. 
But in the traditions of his followers, he is almost uniformly 
represented as an old, or as a gray-headed man. His mode of 
instruction, wholly different from the pedantry and boastful osten- 
tation of the Sophists, was altogether unconstrained, conversa- 
tional, popular, starting from objects lying nearest at hand and 
the most insignificant, and deriving the necessary illustrations and 



54 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

proofs from the most common matters of every day life ; in fact, 
he was reproached by his cotemporaries for speaking ever only of 
drudges, smiths, cobblers and tanners. So we find him at the 
market, in the gymnasia, in the workshops, busy early and late, 
talking with youth, with young men, and with old men, on the 
proper aim and business of life, convincing them of their igno- 
rance, and wakening up in them the slumbering desires after 
knowledge. In every human effort, whether directed to the 
interests of the commonwealth, or to the private individual and the 
gains of trade, to science or to art, this master of helps to 
spiritual births could find fit points of contact for the awakening 
of a true self-knowledge, and a moral and religious consciousness. 
However often his attempts failed, or were rejected with bitter 
scorn, or requited with hatred and unthankfulness, yet, led on by 
the clear conviction that a real improvement in the condition of 
the state could come only from a proper education of its youth, 
he remained to the last true to his chosen vocation. Purely 
Greek in these relations to the rising generation, he designated 
himself, by preference, as the most ardent lover ; Greek too in 
this, that with him, notwithstanding these free relations of friend- 
ship, his own domestic life fell quite into the background. He 
nowhere shows much regard for his wife and children ; the noto- 
rious, though altogether too much exaggerated ill-nature of Xan- 
tippe, leads us to suspect, however, that his domestic relations 
were not the most happy. 

As a man, as a practical sage, Socrates is pictured in the 
brightest colors by all narrators. " He was," says Xenophon, " so 
pious, that he did nothing without the advice of the gods; so 
just, that he never injured any one even in the least ; so com- 
pletely master of himself, that he never chose the agreeable in- 
stead of the good ; so discerning, that he never failed in distin- 
guishing the better from the worse ; " in short, he was ^^ just the 
best and happiest man possible." (Xen. Mem. I. 1, 11. IV. 8, 
11.) Still that which lends to his person such a peculiar charm, 
is the happy blending and harmonious connection of all its char- 
acteristic traits, the perfection of a beautiful, plastic nature. In 



SOCRATES. 55 

all this universality of his genius, in this force of character, by 
which he combined the most contradictory and incongruous ele- 
ments into a harmonious whole, in this lofty elevation above every 
human weakness, — in a word, as a perfect model, he is most strik- 
ingly depicted in the brilliant eulogy of Alcibiades, in the Sym- 
posium of Plato. In the scantier representation of Xenophon, 
also, we find everywhere a classic form, a man possessed of the 
finest social culture, full of Athenian politeness, infinitely removed 
from every thing like gloomy asceticism, a man as valiant upon 
the field of battle as in the festive hall, conducting himself with 
the most unconstrained freedom, and yet with entire sobriety and 
self-control, a perfect picture of the happiest Athenian time, 
without the acerbity, the one-sidedness, and contracted reserve of 
the later moralists, an ideal representation of the genuinely 
human virtues. 

2. Socrates and Aristophanes. — Socrates seems early to 
have attained universal celebrity through the peculiarities attach- 
ing to his person and character. Nature had furnished him with 
a remarkable external physiognomy. His crooked, turned-up 
nose, his projecting eye, his bald pate, his corpulent body, gave 
his form a striking similarity to the Silenic, a comparison which 
is carried out in Xenophon's ^^ Feast," in sprightly jest, and 
in Plato's Symposium, with as much ingenuity as profoundness. 
To this was added his miserable dress, his going barefoot, his 
posture, his often standing still, and rolling his eyes. After all 
this, one will hardly be surprised that the Athenian comedy took 
advantage of such a remarkable character. But there was an- 
other and peculiar motive, which influenced Aristophanes. He 
was a most ardent admirer of the good old times, an enthusiastic 
eulogist of the manners and the constitution, under which the 
fathers had been reared. As it was his great object to waken up 
anew in his people, and to stimulate a longing after those good 
old times, his passionate hatred broke out against all modern 
efforts in politics, art and philosophy, of that increasing mock- 
wisdom, which went hand in hand with a degenerating democracy. 
Hence comes his bitter railing at Cleon, the Demagogue (in the 



56 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Knights) J at Euripides, the sentimental plaj- writer (in the Erogs) 
and at Socrates, the Sophist (in the Clouds). The latter, as the 
representative of a subtle, destructive philosophy, must have ap- 
peared to him just as corrupt and pernicious, as the party of pro- 
gress in politics, who trampled without conscience upon every 
thing which had come down from the past. It is, therefore, the 
fundamental thought of the Clouds to expose Socrates to public 
contempt, as the representative of the Sophistic philosophy, a 
mere semblance of wisdom, at once vain, profitless, corrupting in 
its influence upon the youth, and undermining all true discipline 
and morality. Seen in this light, and from a moral stand-point, 
the motives of Aristophanes may find some excuse, but they can- 
not be justified ; and his representation of Socrates, into whose 
character all the characteristic features of the Sophistic philoso- 
phy are interwoven, even the most contemptible and hateful, yet 
so that the most unmistakable likeness is still apparent, cannot be 
admitted on the ground that Socrates did really have the greatest 
formal resemblance to the Sophists. The Clouds can only be de- 
signated as a culpable misunderstanding, and as an act of gross 
injustice brought about by blinded passion ; and Hegel, when he 
attempts to defend the conduct of Aristophanes, forgets, that, 
while the comic writer may caricature, he must do it without 
having recourse to public calumniation. In fact all the political 
and social tendencies of Aristophanes rest on a gross misunder- 
standing of historical development. The good old times, as he 
fancies them, are a fiction. It lies j ust as little in the realm of 
possibility, that a morality without reflection, and a homely in- 
genuousness, such as mark a nation's childhood, should be forced 
upon a time in which reflection has utterly eaten out all imme- 
diateness, and unconscious moral simplicity, as that a grown up 
man should become a child again in the natural way. Aristo- 
phanes himself attests the impossibility of such a return, when in 
a fit of humor, with cynic raillery, he gives up all divine and 
human authority to ridicule, and thereby, however commendable 
may have been the patriotic motive prompting him to this comic 
extravagance, demonstrates, that he himself no longer stands 



SOCRATES. 57 

upon the basis of the old morality, that he too is the son of his 
time. 

3. The Condemnation of Socrates. — To this same confound- 
ing of his efforts with those of the Sophists, and the same ten- 
dency to restore by violent means the old discipline and morality, 
Socrates, twenty-four years later, fell a victim. After he had 
lived and labored at Athens for many years in his usual manner, 
after the storm of the Peloponnesian war had passed by, and this 
city had experienced the most varied political fortunes, in his 
seventieth year he was brought to trial and accused of neglecting 
the gods of the state, of introducing new deities, and also of 
corrupting the youth. His accusers were Melitus, a young poet, 
Anytus, a demagogue, and Lycon, an orator, men in every respect 
insignificant, and acting, as it seems, without motives of personal 
enmity. The trial resulted in his condemnation. After a fortu- 
nate accident had enabled him to spend thirty days more with his 
scholars in his confinement, spurning a flight from prison, he drank 
the poisoned cup in the year 399 B. C. 

The first motive to his accusation, as already remarked, was 
his identification with the Sophists, the actual belief that his doc- 
trines and activity were marked with the same character of hos- 
tility to the interests of the state, as those of the Sophists, which 
had already occasioned so much mischief The three points in 
the accusation, though evidently resting on a misunderstanding, 
alike indicate this ; they are precisely those by which Aristophanes 
had sought to characterize the Sophist in the person of Socrates. 
This " corruption of the youth," this bringing in of new customs, 
and a new mode of culture and education generally, was precisely 
the charge which was brought against the Sophists ; moreover, in 
Plato's Menon, Anytus, one of the three accusers, is introduced 
as the bitter enemy of the Sophists and of their manner of in- 
struction. So too in respect to the denial of the national gods : 
before this, Protagoras, accused of denying the gods, had been 
obliged to flee, and Prodicus, to drink hemlock, a victim to the 
same distrust. Even five years after the death of Socrates, Xeno- 
phon, who was not present at the trial, felt himself called upon 
3* 



58 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to write his Memorabilia in defence of his teacher, so wide-spread 
and deep-rooted was the prejudice against him. 

Beside this there was also a second, probably a more decisive 
reason. As the Sophistic philosophy was, in its very nature, 
eminently aristocratic, and Socrates, as a supposed Sophist, con- 
sequently passed for an aristocrat, his entire mode of life could 
not fail to make him appear like a bad citizen in the eyes of the 
restored democracy. He had never concerned himself in the 
affairs of the state, had never but once sustained an official char- 
acter, and then, as chief of the Prytanes, had disagreed with the 
will of the people and the rulers. [Plat, Apol, ^ 32. Xen. Mem. 
I. 1, 18.) In his seventieth year, he mounted the orator's stand 
for the first time in his life, on the occasion of his own accusation. 
His whole manner was somewhat cosmopolitan ; he is even said 
to have remarked, that he was not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but 
a citizen of the world. We must also take into account, that he 
found fault with the Athenian democracy upon every occasion, 
especially with the democratic institution of choice by lot, that he 
decidedly preferred the Spartan state to the Athenian, and that 
he excited the distrust of the democrats by his confidential rela- 
tions with the former leaders of the oligarchic party. (Xen. Mem. 
I. 2, 9, sq.) Among others who were of the oligarchic interest, 
and friendly to the Spartans, Critias in particular, one of the 
thirty tyrants, had been his scholar ; so too Alcibiades — two men, 
who had been the cause of much evil to the Athenian people. If 
now we accept the uniform tradition, that two of his accusers were 
men of fair standing in the democratic party, and farther, that 
his judges were men who had fled before the thirty tyrants, and 
later had overthrown the power of the oligarchy, we find it much 
more easy to understand how they, in the case before them, should 
have supposed they were acting wholly in the interest of the 
democratic party, when they pronounced condemnation upon the 
accused, especially as enough to all appearance could be brought 
against him. The hurried trial presents nothing very remarkable, 
in a generation which had grown up during the Peloponnesian 
war, and in a people that adopted and repented of their passion- 



SOCRATES. 



59 



ate resolves with the like haste. Yea, more, if we consider that 
Socrates spurned to have recourse to the usual means and forms 
adopted by those accused of capital crime, and to gain the sym- 
pathy of the people by lamentations, or their favor by flattery, 
that he in proud consciousness of his innocence defied his judges, 
it becomes rather a matter of wonder, that his condemnation was 
carried by a majority of only three to six votes. And even now 
he might have escaped the sentence to death, had he been willing 
to bow to the will of the sovereign people for the sake of a com- 
mutation of his punishment. But as he spurned to set a value upon 
himself, by proposing another punishment, a fine, for example, 
instead of the one moved by his accuser, because this would be 
the same as to acknowledge himself guilty, his disdain could not 
fail to exasperate the easily excited Athenians, and no farther ex- 
planation is needed to show why eighty of his judges who had 
before voted for his innocence, now voted for his death. Such 
was the most lamentable result — a result, afterwards most deeply 
regretted by the Athenians themselves — of an accusation, which 
at the outset was probably only intended to humble the aristo- 
cratic philosopher, and to force him to an acknowledgment of the 
power and the majesty of the people. 

Hegel's view of the fate of Socrates, that it was the result of 
the collision of equally just powers — the Tragedy of Athens as he 
calls it — and that guilt and innocence were shared alike on both 
sides, cannot be maintained on historical grounds, since Socrates 
can neither be regarded exclusively as the representative of the 
modern spirit, the principle of freedom, subjectivity, the concrete 
personality ; nor his judges, as the representatives of the old 
Athenian unreflecting morality. The first cannot be, since 
Socrates, if his principle was at variance with the old Greek 
morality, rested nevertheless so far on the basis of tradition, that 
the accusations brought against him in this respect were false and 
groundless ; and the last cannot be, since at that time, after the 
close of the Peloponnesian war, the old morality and piety had 
long been wanting to the mass of the people, and given place to 
the modern culture, and the whole process against Socrates must 



60 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

be regarded rather as an attempt to restore by violence, in con 
nection with the old constitution, the old defunct morality. The 
fault is not therefore the same on both sides, and it must be held, 
that Socrates fell a victim to a misunderstanding, and to an un- 
justifiable reaction of public sentiment. 

4. The ''G-enius" (Sac/jLoviov) of Socrates. — Those traces 
of the old religious sentiment, which have been handed down to 
us from so many difi'erent sources, and are certainly not to be 
explained from a bare accommodation to the popular belief, on 
the part of the philosopher, and which distinguish him so decidedly 
from the Sophists, show how little Socrates is really to be regarded 
as an innovator in discipline and morals. He commends the art 
of divination, believes in dreams, sacrifices with all proper care, 
speaks of the gods, of their omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, 
and complete sufficiency in themselves, even with the greatest 
reverence, and, at the close of his defence, makes the most solemn 
asseveration of his belief in their existence. In keeping with his 
attaching himself in this way to the popular religion, his new 
principle, though in its results hostile to all external authority, 
nevertheless assumed the form of the popular belief in ^' Demonic " 
signs and symbols. These suggestions of the '' Demon " are a 
knowledge, which is at the same time connected with unconscious- 
ness. They occupy the middle ground between the bare external 
of the Greek oracle, and the purely internal of the spirit. That 
Socrates had the conception of a particular subject, a personal 
" Demon," or '^ Genius," is altogether improbable. Just as little 
can these ^'Demonic" signs, this inward oracle, whose voice 
Socrates professed to hear, be regarded after the modern accep- 
tation, simply as the personification of tUe conscience, or of the 
practical instinct, or of the individual tact. The first article in 
the form of accusation, which evidently refers to this very point, 
shows that Socrates did not speak barely metaphorically of this 
voice, to which he professed to owe his prophecies. And it was 
not solely in reference to those higher questions of decided im- 
portance, that Socrates had these suggestions, but rather and pre- 
eminently with respect to matters of mere accident and arbitrary 



SOCRATES. 61 

choice, as for example, whether, and when, his friends should set 
out on a journey. It is no longer possible to explain the 
" Demon " or '' Genius " of Socrates on psychological grounds ; 
there may have been something of a magnetic character about it. 
It is possible that there may be some connection between this and 
the many other ecstatic or cataleptic states, which are related of 
Socrates in the Symposium of Plato. 

5. The Sources of the Philosophy of Socrates. — Well 
known is the old controversy, whether the picture of Socrates, 
drawn by Xenophon or by Plato, is the most complete and true 
to history, and which of the two men is to be considered as the 
more reliable source for obtaining a knowledge of his philosophy. 
This question is being decided more and more in favor of Xeno- 
phon. Great pains has been taken in former as in later times, to 
bring Xenophon's Memorabilia into disrepute, as a shallow and 
insufficient source, because their plain, and any thing other than 
speculative contents, seemed to furnish no satisfactory ground 
for such a revolution in the world of mind as is attributed to 
Socrates, or for the splendor which invests his name in history, 
or for the character which Plato assigns him ; because again the 
Memorabilia of Xenophon have especially an apologetic aim, and 
their defence does not relate so much to the philosopher as to the 
man ; and finally, because they have been supposed to have the 
appearance of carrying the philosophical over into the unphilo- 
sophical style of the common understanding. A' distinction has 
therefore been made between an exoteric and an esoteric 
Socrates, obtaining the first from Xenophon, the latter from Plato. 
But the preference of Plato to Xenophon has in the first place 
no historical right in its favor, since Xenophon appears as a pro- 
per historian and claims historical credibility, while Plato on the 
other hand never professes to be an historical narrator, save in a 
few passages, and will by no means have all the rest which he 
puts in the mouth of Socrates understood as his authentic ex- 
pressions and discourse. There is, therefore, no historical reason 
for preferring the representation of Socrates which is given by 
Plato. In the second place, the under- valuation of Xenophon 



62 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

rests, for tlie most part, on tlie false notion, that Socrates had a 
proper philosophy, i. e. a speculative system, and on an unhistorical 
mistaking of the limits by which the philosophical character of 
Socrates was conditioned and restricted. There was no proper 
/ Socratic doctrine, but a Socratic life ; and, just on this ground, 
are the different philosophical tendencies of his scholars to be 
explained. 

6. The Universal Character of the Philosophizi'ng of 
Socrates. — The philosophizing of Socrates was limited and re- 
stricted by his opposition, partly to the preceding, and partly to 
the Sophistic philosophy. 

Philosophy before the time of Socrates had been in its essen- 
tial character investigation of nature. But in Socrates, the 
human mind, for the first time, turned itself in upon itself, upon 
its own being, and that too in the most immediate manner, by 
! conceiving itself as active, moral spirit. The positive philoso- 
phizing of Socrates, is exclusively of an ethical character, ex- 
clusively an inquiry into the nature of virtue, so exclusively, and 
so onesidedly, that, as is wont to be the case upon the appearance 
of a new principle, it even expressed a contempt for the striving 
of the entire previous period, with its natural philosophy, and its 
mathematics. Setting every thing under the stand-point of im- 
mediate moral law, Socrates was so far from finding any object in 
" irrational" nature worthy of study, that he rather, in a kind of gene- 
ral teleological manner, conceived it simply in the light of external 
means for the attainment of external ends ; yea, he would not even 
go out to walk, as he says in the Phsedrus of Plato, since one can 
learn nothing from trees and districts of country. Self-knowledge, 
the Delphic (yi/w^t cravTov) appeared to him the only object 
worthy of a man, as the starting-point of all j^hilosophy. Knowl- 
edge of every other kind, he pronounced so insignificant and 
worthless, that he was wont to boast of his ignorance, and to de- 
clare that he excelled other men in wisdom only in this, that he 
was conscious of his own ignorance. (Plat. Ap. S. 21, 23.) 

The other side of the Socratic philosophizing, is its opposition 
to the philosophy of the time. His object, as is well understood, 



SOCRATES. 63 

could have been only this, to place himself upon the same position 
as that occupied by the philosophy of the Sophists, and overcome 
it on its own ground, and by it^J own principles. That Socrates 
shared in the general position of the Sophists, and even had many 
features of external resemblance to them — the Socratic irony, for 
instance — has been remarked above. Many of his assertions, par- 
ticularly these propositions, that no man knowingly does wrong, 
and if a man were knowingly to lie, or to do some other wrong 
act, still he would be better than he who should do the same un- 
consciously, at first sight bear a purely Sophistic stamp. The 
great fundamental thought of the Sophistic philosophy, that all 
moral acting must be a conscious act, was also his. But whilst 
the Sophists made it their object, through subjective reflection to 
confuse and to break up all stable convictions, to make all rules re- 
lating to outward conduct impossible, Socrates had recognized 
thinking as the activity of the universal principle, free, objective 
thought as the measure of all things, and, therefore, instead of 
referring moral duties, and all moral action to the fancy and 
caprice of tne individual, had rather referred all to true knowl- 
edge, to the essence of spirit. It was this idea of knowledge that 
led him to seek, by the process of thought, to gain a conceivable 
objective ground, something real, abiding, absolute, independent of 
the arbitrary volitions of the subject, and to hold fast to uncon- 
ditioned moral laws. Hegel expresses the same opinion, when he 
says that Socrates put morality from ethical grounds, in the place 
of the morality of custom and habit. Hegel distinguishes 
morality, as conscious right conduct, resting on reflection and 
moral principles, from the morality of unsophisticated, half-un- 
conscious virtue, which rests on the compliance with prevailing 
custom. The logical condition of this ethical striving of Socrates, 
was the determining of conceptions, the method of their forma- 
tion. To search out the '' what " of every thing says Xenophon 
[Mem. TV. 6, 1.) was the uninterrupted care of Socrates, and 
Aristotle says expressly that a twofold merit must be ascribed to 
him, viz. : the forming of the method of induction and the giving 
of strictly logical definitions, — the two elements which constitute 



64 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the basis of science. How these two elements stand connected 
with the principle of Socrates we shall at once see. 

7, The Socratic Method. — We must not regard the Socratic 
method as we are accustomed to speak of method in our day, i, e. 
as something which, as such, was distinctly in his consciousness, 
and which he abstracted from every concrete content, but it 
rather had its growth in the very mode of his philosophizing, 
which was not directed to the imparting of a system but to the 
education of the subject in philosophical thinking and life. It 
is only a subjective technicality for his mode of instruction, the 
peculiar manner of his philosophical, familiar life. 

The Socratic method has a twofold side, a negative and a pos- 
itive one. The negative side is the well known Socratic irony. 
The philosopher takes the attitude of ignorance, and would appa- 
rently let himself be instructed by those with whom he converses, 
but through the questions which he puts, the unexpected conse- 
quences which he deduces, and the contradictions in which he 
involves the opposite party, he soon leads them to see that their 
supposed knowledge would only entangle and confuse them. In 
the embarrassment in which they now find themselves placed, and 
seeing that they do not know what they supposed, this supposed 
knowledge completes its own destruction, and the subject who 
had pretended to wisdom learns to distrust his previous opinions 
and firmly held notions. ^' What we knew, has contradicted 
itself," is the refrain of the most of these conversations. 

This result of the Socratic method was only to lead the sub- 
ject to know that he knew nothing, and a great part of the dia- 
logues of Xenophon and Plato go no farther than to represent 
ostensibly this negative result. But there is yet another element 
in his method in which the irony loses its negative appearance. 

The positive side of the Socratic method is the so-called ob- 
stetrics or art of intellectual midwifery. Socrates compares him- 
self with his mother Phaonarete, a midwife, because his position 
was rather to help others bring forth thoughts than to produce 
them himself, and because he took upon himself to distinguish the 
birth of an empty thought from one rich in its content. (Plato 



SOCRATES. 65 

Theatceius^ p, 149.) Through this art of midwifery the philoso- 
pher, by his assiduous questioning, by his interrogatory dissection 
of the notions of him with whom he might be conversing, knew 
how to elicit from him a thought of which he had previously been 
unconscious, and how to help him to the birth of a new thought. 
A chief means in this operation was the method of induction^ or 
the leading of the representation to a conception. The philoso- 
pher, thus, starting from some individual, concrete case, and seiz- 
ing hold of the most common notions concerning it, and finding 
illustrations in the most ordinary and trivial occurrences, knew 
how to remove by his comparisons that which was individual, and 
by thus separating the accidental and contingent from the essen- 
tial, could bring up to consciousness a universal truth and a uni- 
versal determination, — in other words, could form conceptions. 
In order e, g. to find the conception of justice or valor, he would 
start from individual examples of them, and from these deduce 
the universal character or conception of these virtues. Prom this 
we see that the direction of the Socratic induction was to gain 
logical definitions, I define a conception when I develope what 
it is, its essence, its content. I define the conception of justice 
when I set up the common property and logical unity of all its 
different modes of manifestation. Socrates sought to go no far- 
ther than this. " To seek for the essence of virtue," says an 
Aristotelian writing [Eth, I. 5), " Socrates regarded as the 
problem of philosophy, and hence, since he regarded all virtue as 
a knowing, he sought to determine in respect of justice or valor 
what they might really be, i. e. he investigated their essence or 
conception." From this it is very easy to see the connection 
which his method of definitions or of forming conceptions had 
with his practical strivings. He went back to the conception of 
every individual virtue, e. g. justice, only because he was con- 
vinced that the knowledge of this conception, the knowledge of it 
for every individual case, was the surest guide for every moral 
relation. Every moral action, he believed, should start as a con- 
scious action from the conception. 

From this we might characterize the Socratic method as the 



66 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

skill by which a certain sum of given, homogeneous and individual 
phenomena was taken, and their logical unity, the universal prin- 
ciple which lay at their base, inductively found. This method 
presupposes the recogaition that the essence of the objects must 
be comprehended in the thought, that the conception is the true 
being of the thing. Hence we see that the Platonic doctrine of 
I ideas is only the objectifying of this method which in Socrates 
'appears no farther than a subjective dexterity. The Platonic 
ideas are the universal conceptions of Socrates posited as real 
individual beings. Hence Aristotle {Metaph. XIII. 4) most fit- 
tingly characterizes the relation between the Socratic method and 
the Platonic doctrine of ideas with the words, " Socrates posits 
the universal conceptions not as separate, individual substances, 
while Plato does this, and names them ideas." 

8. The Socratic Doctrine concerning Virtue. — The single, 
positive doctrinal sentence which has been transmitted us from 
Socrates is, that virtue is a knowing, — that, consequently, nothing 
is good which happens without discernment, and nothing bad 
which is done with discernment, or, what is the same thing, that 
no man is voluntarily vicious, that the base are such against their 
will, aye, even he who knowingly does wrong is better than he 
who does it ignorantly, because in the latter case, morality and 
true knowledge are both wanting, while in the former — if such a 
case could happen — morality alone is violated. Socrates could 
not conceive how a man should know the good and yet not do it ; 
it was to him a logical contradiction that the man who sought his 
own well being should at the same time knowingly despise it. 
Therefore, with him the good action followed as necessarily from 
the knowledge of the good as a logical conclusion from its pre- 
mise. 

The sentence that virtue is a knowing, has for its logical con- 
sequence the unity of virtue and for its practical consequence the 
teachableness of it. With these three propositions, in which 
every thing is embraced which we can properly term the Socratic 
philosophy, Socrates has laid the first foundation stone for a 
scientific treatment of ethics, a treatment which must be dated 



THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 67 

first from him. But he laid only the foundation stone, for on 
the one side he attempted no carrying out of his principle into 
details, nor any setting up of a concrete doctrine of ethics, but 
only, after the ancient manner, referred to the laws of states and 
the unwritten laws of the universal human order, and on the other 
side, he has not seldom served himself with utilitarian motives to 
establish his ethical propositions, in other words he has referred 
to the external advantages and useful consequences of virtue, by 
which the purity of his ethical point of view became tarnished. 



SECTION XIII. 

THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 

1. Their relation to the Socratic Philosophy. — The 
death of Socrates gave to his life an ideal perfection, and this be- 
came an animating principle which had its working in many 
directions. The apprehension of him as an ideal type forms the 
common character of the immediate Socratic schools. The fun- 
damental thought, that men should have one universal and essen- 
tially true aim, they all received from Socrates ; but since their 
master left no complete and systematic doctrine, but only his 
many-sided life to determine the nature of this aim, every thing 
would depend upon the subjective apprehension of the personal 
character of Socrates, and of this we should at the outset naturally 
expect to find among his different disciples a different estimate. 
Socrates had numerous scholars, but no school. Among these, 
three views of his character have found a place in history. That 
of Antisthenes^ or the Cynical, that of Aristippus, or the Cyre- 
nian, and that of Euclid, or the Megarian — three modes of appre- 
hending him, each of which contains a true element of the So- 
cratic charapcter, but all of which separate that which in the 
master was a harmonious unity, and affirm of the isolated 



G8 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

elements that which could be truly predicated only of the whole. 
They are therefore, one-sided, and give of Socratee a false pic- 
ture. This, however, was not wholly their fault; but in that 
Aristippus was forced to go back to the theory of knowledge of 
Protagoras, and Euclid to the metaphysics of the Eleatics, they 
rather testify to the subjective character and to the want of 
method and system of the Socratic philosophy, and exhibit in 
their defects and one-sidedness, in part, only the original weak- 
ness which belongs to the doctrine of their master. 

2. Antisthenes and the Cynics. — As a strictly literal ad- 
herent of the doctrine of Socrates, and zealously though grossly, 
and often with caricature imitating his method, Antisthenes stands 
nearest his master. In early life a disciple of Grorgias, and him- 
self a teacher of the Sophistic philosophy, he subsequently became 
an inseparable attendant of Socrates, after whose death he founded 
a school in the Cynosarges, whence his scholars and adherents 
took the name of Cynics, though according to others this name 
was derived from their mode of life. The doctrine of Antis- 
thenes is only an abstract expression for the Socratic ideal of 
virtue. Like Socrates he considered virtue the final cause of 
men, regarding it also as knowledge or science, and thus as an 
object of instruction ; but the ideal of virtue as he had beheld it 
in the person of Socrates was realized in his estimation only in 
the absence of every need (in his appearance he imitated a beg- 
gar with stafi" and scrip) and hence in the disregarding of all 
former intellectual interests ; virtue with him aims only to avoid 
evil, and therefore has no need of dialectical demonstrations, but 
only of Socratic vigor ; the wise man, according to him, is self- 
sufficient, independent of every thing, indiiFerent in respect of 
marriage, family, and the public life of society, as also in respect 
of wealth, honor, and enjoyment. In this ideal of Antisthenes, 
which is more negative than positive, we miss entirely the genial 
humanity and the universal susceptibility of his master, and still 
more a cultivation of those fruitful dialectic elements which the 
Socratic philosophizing contained. With a more decided con- 
tempt for all knowledge, and a still greater scorn of all the cus- 



THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 69 

toms of society, the later Cynicism became frequently a repulsive 
and shameful caricature of the Socratic spirit. This was especially 
the case with Diogenes of Sinope, the only one of his disciples 
whom Antisthenes suffered to remain with him. In their high 
estimation of virtue and philosophy these Cynics, who have been 
suitably styled the Capuchins of the Grecian world, preserved a 
trace of the original Socratic philosophy, but they sought virtue 
^' in the shortest way," in a life according to nature as they them 
selves expressed it, that is, in shutting out the outer world, in at- 
taining a complete independence, and absence of every need, and 
in renouncing art and science as well as every determinate aim. 
To the wise man said they nothing should go amiss ; he should be 
mighty over every need and desire, free from the restraints of civil 
law and of custom, and of equal privileges with the gods. An 
easy life, said Diogenes, is assigned by the gods to that man who 
limits himself to his necessities, and this true philosophy may be 
attained by every one, through perseverance and the power of self- 
denial. Philosophy and philosophical interest is there none in 
this school of beggars. All that is related of Diogenes are anec- 
dotes and sarcasms. 

We see here how the ethics of the Cynic school lost itself in 
entirely negative statements, a consequence naturally resulting 
from the fact that the original Socratic conception of virtue 
lacked a concrete positive content, and was not systematically car* 
ried out. Cynicism is the negative side of the Socratic doctrine. 

3. Aristippus and the Cyrenians. — Aristippus of Cyrene, 
numbered till the death of Socrates among his adherents, is repre- 
sented by Aristotle as a Sophist, and this with propriety, since he 
received money for his instructions. He appears in Xenophon as 
a man devoted to pleasure. The adroitness with which he adapted 
himself to every circumstance, and the knowledge of human na- 
ture by which in every condition he knew how to provide means 
to satisfy his desire for good living and luxury, were well known 
among the ancients. Brought in contact with the government, he 
kept himself aloof from its cares lest he should become dependent ; 
he spent most of his time abroad in order to free himself from 



70 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

every restraint ; he made it his rule that circumstances should be 
dependent upon him, while he should be independent of them. 
Though such a man seems little worthy of the name of a Socrati- 
cist, yet has he two points of contact with his master which should 
not be overlooked. Socrates had called virtue and happiness co- 
ordinately the highest end of man, i, e. he had indeed asserted 
most decidedly the idea of a moral action, but because he brought 
this forward only in an undeveloped and abstract form, he was 
only able in concrete cases to establish the obligation of the moral 
law in a utilitarian way, by appealing to the benefit resulting from 
the practice of virtue. This side of the Socratic principle 
Aristippus adopted for his own, affirming that pleasure is the ulti- 
mate end of life, and the highest good. Moreover, this pleasure^ 
as Aristippus regards it, is not happiness as a condition embracing 
the whole life, nor pleasure reduced to a system, but is only the 
individual sensation of pleasure which the body receives, and in 
this all determinations of moral worth entirely disappear ; but in 
that Aristippus recommends knowledge, self-government, temper- 
ance, and intellectual culture as means for acquiring and preserv- 
ing enjdyment, and, therefore, makes a cultivated mind necessary 
to judge respecting a true satisfaction, he shows that the Socratic 
spirit was not yet wholly extinguished within him, and that the 
name of pseudo-Socraticist which Schleiermacher gives him, hardly 
belongs to him. 

The other leaders of the Cyrenian school, Hegesias^ Theodo- 
rus, AnniceriSj we can here only name. The farther development 
of this school is wholly occupied in more closely defining the na- 
ture of pleasure, i. e. in determining whether it is to be appre- 
hended as a momentary sensation, or as an enduring condition 
embracing the whole life; whether it belonged to the mind or the 
body, whether an isolated individual could possess it, or whether 
it is found alone in the social relations of life ; whether we should 
regard it as positive or negative, (t. e. simply the absence of pain.) 

4. Euclid and the Megarians. — The union of the dialecti- 
cal and the ethical is a common character in all the partial 
Socratic schools ; the difierence consists only in this, that in the 



THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 71 

one the ethical is made to do service to the dialectical, and that in 
the other, the dialectical stands in subjection to the ethical. The 
former is especially true of the Megarian school, whose essential 
peculiarity was pointed out by the ancients themselves as a com- 
bination of the Socratic and Eleatic principles. The idea of the 
good is on the ethical side the same as the idea of being on the 
physical; it was, therefore, only an application to ethics of the 
Eleatic view and method when Euclid called the good pure being, 
and the not-good, not-being. What is farther related of Euclid is 
obscure, and may here be omitted. The Megarian school was 
kept up under different leaders after his death, but without living 
force, and without the independent activity of an organic develop- 
•nent. As hedonism (the philosophical doctrine of the Cyreneans 
that pleasure is the chief good) led the way to the doctrine of 
Epicurus, and cynicism was the bridge toward the Stoic, so the 
later Megaric development formed the transition point to scepti- 
cism. Directing its attention ever more exclusively towards the 
culture of the formal and logical method of argument, it left 
entirely out of view the moral thoughts of Socrates. Its sophis- 
tries and quiddities which were, for the most part, only plays of • 
word and wit, were widely known and noted among the ancients. 

5. P^jATO, as the complete Socraticist. — The attempts thus 
far to build upon the foundation pillars of the Socratic doctrine, 
started without a vigorous germinating principle, and ended fruit- 
lessly. Plato was the only one of his scholars who has approached 
and represented the ivJiole Socrates. Starting from the Socratic 
idea of knowledge he brought into one focus the scattered ele- 
ments and rays of truth which could be collected from his master 
or from the philosophers preceding him, and gave to philosophy a 
systematic completeness. Socrates had affirmed the principle that 
conception is the true being and the only actual, and had urged to 
a knowledge according to the conception ; but these positions were 
no farther developed. His philosophy is not yet a system, but is 
only the first impulse toward a philosophical development and 
method. Plato is the first who has approached a systematic rep- 



1 



72 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

resentation and development of the ideal world of conceptions 
true in themselves. 

The Platonic system is Socrates objectified, the blending and 
reconciling of preceding philosophy. 



SECTION XIV. 

PLATO. 

I. Plato's Life. 1. His Youth. — Plato, the son of Aristo, 
of a noble Athenian family, was born in the year 429 B. C. It was 
the year of the death of Pericles, the second year of the Pelopon- 
nesian war, so fatal to Athens. Born in the centre of Grecian 
culture and industry, and descended from an old and noble family, 
he received a corresponding education, although no farther tidings 
of this have been transmitted to us, than the insignificant names 
of his teachers. That the youth growing up under such circum- 
stances should choose the seclusion of a philosophic life rather 
than a political career may seem strange, since many and favor- 
able opportunities for the latter course lay open before him. 
Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, was the cousin of his mother, 
and Charmides, who subsequently, under the oligarchic rule at 
Athens, found his death at Thrasybulus on the same day with 
Critias, was his uncle. Notwithstanding this, he is never known 
to have appeared a single time as a public speaker in the assembly 
of the people. In view of the rising degeneracy and increasing 
political corruption of his native land, he was too proud to court 
for himself the favor of the many-headed Demos ; and more at- 
tached to Doricism than to the democracy and practice of the 
Attic public life, he chose to make science his chief pursuit, rather 
than as a patriot to struggle in vain against unavoidable disaster, 
and become a martyr to his political opinions. He regarded the 
Athenian state as lost, and to hinder its inevitable ruin he woul4 
not bring a useless offering. 



PLATO. 73 

2. His Years of Discipline. — A youth of twenty, Plato came 
to Socrates, in whose intercourse he spent eight years. Besides 
a few doubtful anecdotes, nothing is known more particularly of 
this portion of his history. In Xenophon's Memorabilia (III. 6) 
Plato is only once cursorily mentioned, but this in a way that 
indicates an intimate relation between the scholar and his master. 
Plato himself in his dialogues has transmitted nothing concerning 
his personal relations to Socrates ; only once {Fhced. p. 59) he 
names himself among the intimate friends of Socrates. But the 
influence which Socrates exerted upon him, how he recognized in 
him the complete representation of a wise man, how he found not 
only in his doctrine but also in his life and action the most fruit- 
ful philosophic germs, the significance which the personal character 
of his master as an ideal type had for him — all this we learn with 
sufficient accuracy from his writings, where he places his own 
incomparably more developed philosophical system in the mouth 
of his master, whom he makes the centre of his dialogues and the 
leader of his discourses 

3. His YEAPtS of Travel.— After the death of Socrates 399 
B. C, in the thirtieth year of his age, Plato, fearing lest he also 
should be met by the incoming reaction against philosophy, left, 
in company with other Socraticists, his native city, and betook 
himself to Euclid, his former fellow-scholar, the founder of the 
Megaric school {cf, ^ XIII. 4) at Megara. Up to this time a pure 
Socraticist, he became greatly animated and energized by his 
intercourse with the Megarians, among whom a peculiar philoso- 
phical direction, a modification of Socraticism, was already asserted. 
We shall see farther on the influence of this residence at Megara 
upon the foundation of his philosophy, and especially upon the 
elaboration and confirmation of his doctrine of Ideas. One whole 
period of his literary activity and an entire group of his dialogues, 
can only be satisfactorily explained by the intellectual stimulus 
gained at this place. From Megara, Plato visited Cyrene, Egypt, 
Magna-Grecia and Sicily. In Magna-Grecia he became acquainted 
with the Pythagorean philosophy, which was then in its highest 
bloom. His abode among the Pythagoreans had a marked effect 

4 



74 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



upon him ; jis a man it made liim more practical, and increased 
his zest for life and his interest in public life and social inter- 
course ; as a philosopher it furnished him with a new incitement 
to science, and new motives to literary labor. The traces of the 
Pythagoreoan philosophy may be seen l^hrough all the last period 
of his literary life ; especially his aversion to public and political 
life was greatly softened by his intercourse with the Pythagoreans. 
While in the Theatsetus, he affirmed most positively the incom- 
patibility of philosophy with public life, we find in his later dia- 
logues, especially in the Republic and also in the Statesman — 
upon which Pythagorcanism seems already to have had an influ- 
ence — a returning favor for the actual world, and the well-known 
sentence that the ruler must be a philosopher is^n expression 
very characteristic of this change. His visit to Sicily gave him 
the acquaintance of the elder Dionysius and Dion his brother-in- 
law, but the philosopher and the tyrant had little in common. 
Plato is said to have incurred his displeasure to so high a degree, 
that his life was in danger. After about ten years spent in travel, 
he returned to Athens in the fortieth year of his age, (389 or 388 
B. C.) 

4. Plato as Head of the Academy ; His Years of Instruc- 
tion. — On his return, Plato surrounded himself with a circle of 
pupils. The place where he taught was known as the academy, a 
gymnasium outside of Athens where Plato had inherited a garden 
from his father. Of his school and of his later life, we have only 
the most meagre accounts. His life passed evenly along, inter- 
rupted only by a second and third visit to Sicily, where mean- 
while the younger Dionysius had come to the throne. This second 
and third residence of Plato at the court of Syracuse abounds in 
vicissitudes, and shows us the philosopher in a great variety of 
conditions {cf. V\\x.iViXQ\i'B Life of Dion)] but to us, in estimating 
his philosophical character, it is of interest only for the attempt, 
which, as seems probable from all accounts, he there made to 
realize his ideal of a moral state, and by the philosophical educa- 
tion of the new ruler to unite philosophy and the reins of govern- 
ment in one and tlie same hand, or at least in some way by means 



PLATO. 75 

of philosophy to achieve a healthy change in the Sicilian state 
constitution. His efforts were however fruitless ; the circumstances 
were not propitious, and the character of the young Dionysius, 
who was one of those mediocre natures who strive after renown 
and distinction, but are capable of nothing profound and earnest, 
deceived the expectations concerning him which Plato, according 
to Dion's account, thought he had reason to entertain. 

When we look at Plato's philosophical labors in the academy, 
we are struck with the different relations to public life which 
philosophy already assumes. Instead of carrying philosophy, like 
Socrates, into the streets and public places and making it there a 
subject of social conversation with any one who desired it, he lived 
and labored entirely withdrawn from the movements of the public, 
satisfied to influence the pupils who surrounded him. In pre- 
cisely the measure in which philosophy becomes a system and the 
systematic form is seen to be essential, does it lose its popular 
character and begin to demand a scientific training, and to become 
a topic for the school, an esoteric affair. Yet such was the respect 
for the name of a philosopher, and especially for the name of 
Plato, that requests were made to him by different states to com- 
pose for them a book of laws, a work which in some instances it 
was ^id was actually performed. Attended by a retinue of de- 
voted disciples, among whom were even women disguised as men, 
and receiving reiterated demonstrations of respect, he reached 
the age of eighty-one years, with his powers of mind unweakened 
to the latest moment. 

The close of his life seems to have been clouded by disturb- 
ances and divisions which arose in his school under the lead of 
Aristotle. Engaged in writing, or as others state it at a mar- 
riage feast, death came upon him as a gentle sleep, 348 B. C. 
His remains were buried in the Cer amicus, not far from the 
academy. 

II. The Inner Development of the Platonic Philosophy 
AND Writings. — That the Platonic philosophy has a real develop- 
ment, that it should not be apprehended as a perfectly finished 
system to which the different writings stand related as constitu- 



76 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 



ent elements, but that these are rather steps of this inner de- 
velopment, as it were stages passed over in the philosophical 
journey ings of the philosopher — is a view of the highest import- 
ance for the true estimate of Plato's literary labors. 

Plato's philosophical and literary labors may be divided into 
three periods, which we can characterize in different ways. Look- . 
ing at them in a chronological or biographical respect, we might 1 1 
call them respectively the periods of his years of discipline, of 
travel, of instruction, or if we view them in reference to the pre- 
vailing external influence under which they were formed, they 
might be termed the Socratic, Heraclitic-Eleatic, and the Pytha- || 
gorean ; or if we looked at the content alone, we might term them 
the Anti-Sophistic-Ethic, the Dialectic or mediating, and the sys- 
tematic or constructive periods. 

The First Period — the Socratic — is marked externally by 
the predominance of the dramatic element, and in reference to its 
philosophical stand-point, by an adherence to the method and 
the fundamental principles of the Socratic doctrine. Not yet 
accurately informed of the results of former inquiries, and rather 
repelled from the study of the history of philosophy than attract- 
ed to it by the character of the Socratic philosophizing, Plato 
confined himself to an analytical treatment of conceptions, jJ^rtic- 
ularly of the conception of virtue, and to a reproducing of his 
master, which, though something more than a mere recital of ver- 
bal recollections, had yet no philosophical independence. His 
Socrates exhibits the same view of life and the same scientific 
stand-point which the historical Socrates of Xenophon had had. 
His efforts were thus, like those of his contemporary fellow disci- 
ples, directed prominently toward practical wisdom. His conflicts 
however, like those of Socrates, had fiir more weight against the 
prevailing want of science and the shallow sophisms of the day 
than for the opposite scientific directions. The whole period 
bears an eclectic and hortatory character. The highest point in 
which the dialogues of this group culminate is the attempt which 
at the same time is found in the Socratic doctrine to determine 



PLATO. 77 

the certainty of an absolute content (of an objective reality) to 
the good. 

The history of the development of the Platonic philosophy 
would assume a very different form if the view of some modern 
scholars respecting the date of the Phaedrus were correct. If, as 
they claim, the Phaedrus were Plato's earliest work, this circum- 
stance would betray from the outset an entirely different course 
of culture for him than we could suppose in a mere scholar of 
Socrates. The doctrine in this dialogue of the pre-existence of 
souls, and their periodical transmigrations, of the relation of 
earthly beauty with heavenly truth, of divine inspiration in con- 
trast to human wisdom, the conception of love, — these and other 
Pythagorean ingredients are all so distinct from the original So- 
cratic doctrine that we must transfer the most of that which Plato 
has creatively produced during his whole philosophical career, to 
the beginning of his philosophical development. The improba- 
bility of this, and numerous other grounds of objection, claim a 
far later composition for this dialogue. Setting aside for the pre- 
sent the Phaedrus, the Platonic development assumes the follow- 
ing form : 

Among the earliest works (if they are genuine) are the small 
dialogues which treat of Socratic questions and themes in a So- 
cratic way. Of these e, g, the Charmides discusses temperance, 
the Lysis friendship, the Laches valor, the lesser Hippias know- 
ing and wilful wrong-doing, the first Alcibiades, the moral and 
intellectual qualifications of a statesman, &c. The immaturity 
and the crudeness of these dialogues, the use of scenic means 
which have only an external relation to the content, the scanti- 
ness and want of independence in the content, the indirect man- 
ner of investigation which lacks a satisfactory and positive result, 
the formal and analytical treatment of the conceptions discussed 
— all these features indicate the early character of these minor 
dialogues. 

The Protagoras may be taken as a proper type of the Socratic 
period. Since this dialogue, though directing its whole polemic 
against the Sophistic philosophy, confined itself almost exclusively 



78 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to "the outward manifestation of this system, to its influence on 
its age and its method of instruction in opposition to that of Soc- 
rates, without entering into the ground and philosophical charac- 
ter of the doctrine itself, and, still farther, since, when it comes 
in a strict sense to philosophize, it confines itself, in an indirect 
investigation, to the Socratic conception of virtue according to its 
difi'erent sides (virtue as knowing, its unity and its teachableness, 
cf. ^ XII. 8), — it represents in the clearest manner the tendency, 
character and want of the first period of Plato's literary life. 

The Gorgias, written soon after the death of Socrates, repre- 
sents the third and highest stage of this period. Directed against 
the Sophistical identification of pleasure and virtue, of the good 
and of the agreeable, i. e. against the ajQfirmation of an absolute 
moral relativity, this dialogue maintains the proof that the good, 
far from owing its origin only to the right of the stronger, and 
thus to the arbitrariness of the subject, has in itself an indepen- 
dent reality and objective validity, and, consequently, alone is 
truly useful, and thus, therefore, the measure of pleasure must 
follow the higher measure of the good. In this direct and posi- 
tive polemic against the Sophistic doctrine of pleasure, in its ten- 
dency to a view of the good as something firm and abiding, and 
secure against all subjective arbitrariness, consists prominently 
the advance which the Gorgias makes over the Protagoras. 

In the first Socratic period the Platonic philosophizing be- 
came ripe and ready for the reception of Eleatic and Pythagorean 
categories. To grapple by means of these categories with the 
higher questions of philosophy, and so to free the Socratic philos- 
ophy from its so close connection with practical life, was the task 
of the second period. 

The Second Period — the dialectic or the Megaric — is marked 
externally, by a less prominence of form and poetic contempla- 
tion, and not unfrequently indeed, by obscurity and difficulties of 
style, and internally, by the attempt to give a satisfactory media- 
tion for the Eleatic doctrine and a dialectic foundation for the 
doctrine of ideas. 

By his exile at Megara, and his journeys to Italy, Plato be- 



PLATO. 79 

came acquainted with other and opposing philosophical directions, 
from which he must now separate himself in order to elevate the 
Socratic doctrine to its true significance. It was now that he 
first learned to know the philosophic theories of the earlier sages, 
for whose study the necessary means could not at that period, so 
wanting in literary publicity, be found at Athens. By his sepa- 
ration from these varying stand-points, as his older fellow pupils 
had already striven to do, he attempted striding over the narrow 
limits of ethical philosophizing, to reach the final ground of know- 
ing, and to carry out the art of forming conceptions as brought 
forward by Socrates, to a science of conceptions, i. e. to the doc- 
trine of ideas. That all human acting depends upon knowing, 
and that all thinking depends upon the conception, were results 
to which Plato might already have attained through the scientific 
generalization of the Socratic doctrine itself, but now to bring 
this Socratic wisdom within the circle of speculative thinking, to 
establish dialectically that the conception in its simple unity is 
that which abides in the change of phenomena, to disclose the 
fundamental principles of knowledge which had been evaded by 
Socrates, to grasp the scientific theories of the opposers direct in 
their scientific grounds, and follow them out in all their ramifica- 
tions, — this is the problem which the Megaric family of dialogues 
attempts to solve. 

The Theataotus stands at the head of this group. This is 
chiefly directed against the Protagorean theory of knowledge, 
against the identification of the thinking and the sensible percep- 
tion, or against the claim of an objective relativity of all knowl- 
edge. As the Grorgias before it had sought to establish the in- 
dependent being of the ethical, so does the Theataetus ascending 
from the ethical to the theoretical, endeavor to prove an indepen- 
dent being and objective reality for the logical conceptions which 
lie at the ground of all representation and thinking, in a word, to 
prove the objectivity of truth, the fact that there lies a province 
of thought immanent in the thinking and independent of the per 
ceptions of the senses. These conceptions, whose objective reality 



80 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

is thus affirmed, are fhose of a species, likeness and unlikeness, 
sameness and difference, &c. 

The Theatsetus is followed by the trilogy of the Sophist, the 
Statesman, and the Philosopher, which completes the Megaric 
group of dialogues. The first of these dialogues examines the 
conception of appearance, that ie of the not-being, the last (for 
which the Parmenides may be taken) the conception of being. 
Both dialogues are especially directed to the Eleatic doctrine. 
After Plato had recognized the conception in its simple unity as 
that which abides in the change of phenomena, his attention was 
naturally turned towards the Eleatics, who in an opposite way had 
attained the similar result that in unity consists all true substan- 
tiality, and to multiplicity as such no true being belongs. In 
order more easily on the one side to carry out this fundamental 
thought of the Eleatic to its legitimate result, in which the 
Megarians had already preceded him, he was obliged to give a 
metaphysical substance to his abstract conceptions of species, i, e, 
ideas. But on the other side, he could not agree with the inflex- 
ibility and exclusiveness of the Eleatic unity, unless he would 
wholly sacrifice the multiplicity of things ; he was rather obliged 
to attempt to show by a dialectic development of the Eleatic 
principle that the one must be at the same time a totality, organ- 
ically connected, and embracing multiplicity in itself. This 
double relation to the Eleatic principle is carried out by the 
Sophist and the Parmenides ; by the former polemically against the 
Eleatic doctrine, in that it proves the being of the appearance or 
the not-being, and by the latter pacifically, in that it analyzes the 
Eleatic one by its own logical consequences into many. The inner 
progress of the doctrine of Ideas in the Megaric group of dia- 
logues is therefore this, viz., that the Theataetus, in opposition to 
the Heraclitico-Protagorean theory of the absolute becoming, 
affirms the objective and independent reality of ideas, and the 
Sophist shows their reciprocal relation and combining qualities, 
while the Parmenides in fine exhibits their whole dialectic com- 
pleteness with their relation to the phenomenal world. 

The Third Period begins with the return of the philosopher 



PLATO. 81 

to his native city. It unites the completeness of form belonging 
to the first with the profounder characteristical content belonging 
to the second. The memories of his youthful years seem at this 
time to have risen anew before the soul of Plato, and to have im- 
parted again to his literary activity the long lost freshness and 
fulness of that period, while at the same time his abode in foreign 
lands, and especially his acquaintance with the Pythagorean phi- 
losophy, had greatly enriched his mind with a store of images and 
ideals. This reviving of old memories is seen in the fact that the 
writings of this group return with fondness to the personality of 
Socrates, and represent in a certain degree the whole philosophy 
of Plato as the exaltation of the doctrine and the ideal embodi- 
ment of the historical character of his early master. In opposi- 
tion to both of the first two periods, the third is marked exter- 
nally by an excess of the mythical form connected with the grow- 
ing influence of Pythagoreanism in this period, and internally by 
the application of the doctrine of ideas to the concrete spheres 
of psychology, ethics and natural science. That ideas possess 
objective reality, and are the foundation of all essentiality and 
truth, while the phenomena of the sensible world are only copies 
of these, was a theory whose vindication was no longer attempted, 
but which was presupposed as already proved, and as forming a 
dialectical basis for the pursuit of the different branches of science. 
With this was connected a tendency to unite the hitherto separate 
branches of science into a systematic whole, as well as to mould 
together the previous philosophical directions, and show the inner 
application of the Socratic philosophy for ethics, of the Eleatic 
for dialectics, and the Pythagorean for physics. 

Upon this stand-point, the Phaedrus, Plato's inaugural to his 
labors in the Academy, together with the Symposium, which is 
closely connected with it, attempts to subject the rhetorical theory 
and practice of their time to a thorough criticism, in order to show 
in opposition to this theory and practice, that the fixedness and 
stability of a true scientific principle could only be attained by 
grounding every thing on the idea. On the same stand-point the 
Phaedon attempts to prove the immortality of the soul from the 



82 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

doctrine of ideas ; the Philebus to bring out the conception oi 
pleasure and of the highest good ; the Republic to develop the 
essence of the state, and the Timaeus that of nature. 

Having thus sketched the inner development of the Platonic 
philosophy, we now turn to a systematic statement of its princi- 
ples. 

III. — Classification of the Platonic System. — The phi- 
losophy of Plato, as left by himself, is without a systematic state- 
ment, and has no comprehensive principle of classification. He 
has given us only the history of his thinking, the statement of his 
philosophical development ; we are therefore limited in reference 
to his classification of philosophy to simple intimations. Accord- 
ingly, some have divided the Platonic system into theoretical and 
practical science, and others into a philosophy of the good, the 
beautiful and the true. Another classification, which has some 
support in old records, is more correct. Some of the ancients say 
that Plato was the first to unite in one whole the scattered philo- 
sophical elements of the earlier sages, and so to obtain for philoso- 
phy the three parts, logic, physics, and ethics. The more accurate 
statement is given by Sextus Empiricus, that Plato has laid the 
foundation for this threefold division of philosophy, but that it 
was first expressly recognized and affirmed by his scholars, Xeno- 
crates and Aristotle. The Platonic system may, however, with- 
out difficulty, be divided into these three parts. True, there are 
many dialogues which mingle together in different proportions the 
logical, the ethical, and the physical element, and though even 
where Plato treats of some special discipline, the three are suf- 
fered constantly to interpenetrate each other, still there are some 
dialogues in which this fundamental scheme can be clearly recog- 
nized. It cannot be mistaken that the Tim?eus has predominantly 
a physical, and the Republic as decidedly an ethical element, and 
if the dialectic is expressly represented in no separate dialogue, 
yet does the whole Megaric group pursue the common end of 
bringing out the conception of science and its true object, being, 
and is, therefore, in its content decidedly dialectical. Plato must 
have been led to this threefold division by even the earlier de- 



PLATO. 



velopment of philosophy, and though Xenocrates does not clearly 
see it, yet since Aristotle presupposes it as universally admitted, 
we need not scruple to make it the basis on which to represent 
the Platonic system. 

The order which these different parts should take, Plato him- 
self has not declared. Manifestly, however, dialectics should 
have the first place as the ground of all philosophy, since Plato 
uniformly directs that every philosophical investigation should 
begin with accurately determining the idea {Phced. p. 99. PJicedr. 
p. 237), while he subsequently examines all the concrete spheres 
of science on the stand-point of the doctrine of ideas. The 
relative position of the other two parts is not so clear. Since, 
however, the physics culminates in the ethics, and the ethics, 
on the other hand, has for its basis physical investigations into 
the ensouling power in nature, we may assign to physics the 
former place of the two. 

The mathematical sciences Plato has expressly excluded from 
philosophy. He considers them as helps to philosophical think- 
ing {Rep, VIL 526), as necessary steps of knowledge, with- 
out which no one can come to philosophy {lb. VI. 510) ; but 
mathematics with him is not philosophy, for it assumes its prin- 
ciples or axioms, without at all accounting for them, as though 
they were manifest to all, a procedure which is not permitted to 
pure science ; it also serves itself for its demonstrations, with il- 
lustrative figures, although it does not treat of these, but of that 
which they represent to the understanding {Ih.). Plato thus 
places mathematics midway between a correct opinion and sci- 
ence, clearer than the one, but more obscure than the other. {Ih. 
VII. 533.) 

IV. The Platonic Dialectics. 1. Conception of Dialec- 
tics. — The conception of dialectics or of logic, is used by the 
ancients for the most part in a very wide sense, while Plato em- 
ploys it in repeated instances interchangeably with philosophy, 
though on the other hand he treats it also as a separate branch 
of philosophy. He divides it from physics as the science of the 
eternal and unchangeable from the science of the changeable, 



84 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which never is, but is only ever becoming ; he distinguishes also 
between it and ethics, so far as the latter treats of the good not 
absolutely, but in its concrete exhibition in morals and in the 
state ; so that dialectics may be termed philosophy in a higher 
sense, while physics and ethics follow it as two less exact sciences, 
or as a not yet perfected philosophy. Plato himself defines dia- 
lectics, according to the ordinary signification of the word, as the 
art of developing knowledge by way of dialogue in questions and 
answers. {Bep, VII. 534). But since the art of communicating 
correctly in dialogue is according to Plato, at the same time the 
art of thinking correctly, and as thus thinking and speaking 
could not be separated by the ancients, but every process of 
thought was a living dialogue, so Plato would more accurately 
define dialectics as the science which brings speech to a correct 
issue, and which combines or separates the species, i. e. the con- 
ceptions of things correctly with one another. {Soph, p. 253. 
PhcBclr. p. 266). Dialectics with him has two divisions, to know 
what can and what cannot be connected, and to know how divi- 
sion or combination can be. But as with Plato these conceptions 
of species or ideas are the only actual and true existence, so have 
we, in entire conformity with this, a third definition of dialectics 
{Philebus p. 57), as the science of being, the science of that 
which is true and unchangeable, the science of all other sciences. 
We may therefore briefly characterize it as the science of absolute 
being or of ideas. 

2. What is Science? (1.) As opposed to sensation and the 
sensuous representation. — The Theataetus is devoted to the dis- 
cussion of this question in opposition to the Protagorean sensual- 
ism. That all knowledge consists in perception, and that the 
two are one and the same thing, was the Protagorean proposition. 
From this it followed, as Protagoras himself had inferred, that 
things are, as they appear to me, that the perception or sensation 
is infallible. But since perception and sensation are infinitely 
diversified with different individuals, and even greatly vary in 
the same individual, it follows farther, that there are no objective 
determinations and predicates, that we can never affirm what a 



PLATO. 85 

thing is in itself, tliat all conceptions, great, small, light, heavy, 
to increase, to diminish, &c., have only a relative significance, 
and consequently, also, the conceptions of species, as combinations 
of the changeful many, are wholly wanting in constancy and sta- 
bility. In opposition to this Protagorean thesis, Plato urges the 
following objections and contradictions. First. The Protago- 
rean doctrine leads to the most startling consequences. If being 
and appearance, knowledge and perception are one and the same 
thing, then is the irrational brute, which is capaole of perception, 
as fully entitled to be called the measure of all things, as man, 
and if the representation is infallible, as the expression of my 
subjective character at a given time, then need there be no more 
instruction, no more scientific conclusion, no more strife, and no 
more refutation. Second. The Protagorean doctrine is a logical 
contradiction ; for according to it Protagoras must yield the 
question to every one who disputes with him, since, as he himself 
affirms, no one is incorrect, but every one judges only according 
to truth ; the pretended truth of Protagoras is therefore true for 
no man, not even for himself. Third, Protagoras destroys the 
knowledge of future events. That which I may regard as profit- 
able may not therefore certainly prove itself as such in the result. 
To determine that which is really profitable implies a calculation 
of the future, but since the ability of men to form such a calcu- 
lation is very diverse, it follows from this that not man as such, 
but only the wise man can be the measure of things. Fourth. 
The theory of Protagoras destroys perception. Perception, ac- 
cording to him, rests upon a distinction of the perceived object 
and the perceiving subject, and is the common product of the 
two. But in his view the objects are in such an uninterrupted 
flow, that they can neither become fixed in seeing nor in hearing. 
This condition of constant change renders all knowledge from 
sense, and hence (the identity of the two being assumed), all 
knowledge impossible. Fifth, Protagoras overlooks the apriori 
element in knowledge. It is seen in an analysis of the sense- 
perception itself, that all knowledge cannot be traced to the 
activity of the senses, but that there must also be presupposed 



86 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 

besides these, intellectual functions, and hence an independent 
province of supersensible knowledge. We see with the eyes, and 
hear with the ears, but to group together the perceptions attained 
through these different organs, and to hold them fast in the unity 
of self- consciousness, is beyond the power of the activity of the 
senses. Again, we compare the different sense-perceptions with 
one another, a function which cannot belong to the senses, since 
each sense can only furnish its own distinctive perception. Still 
farther, we bring forward determinations respecting the percep- 
tions which we manifestly cannot owe to the senses, in that we 
predicate of these perceptions, being and not-being, likeness and 
unlikeness, &c. These determinations, to which also belong the 
beautiful and the odious, good and evil, constitute a peculiar prov- 
ince of knowledge, which the soul, independently of every sense- 
perception, brings forward through its own independent activity. 
The ethical element of this Plato exhibits in his attack upon 
sensualism, and also in other dialogues. He maintains {in the 
Sophist), that men holding such opinions must be improved be- 
fore they can be instructed, and that when made morally better, 
they will readily recognize the truth of the soul and its moral 
and rational capacities, and affirm that these are real things, 
though objects of neither sight nor of feeling. 

(2.) The Relation of Knowing to Opinion, — Opinion is just as 
little identical with knowing as is the sense-perception. An in- 
correct opinion is certainly different from knowing, and a correct 
one is not the same, for it can be engendered by the art of speech 
without therefore attaining the validity of true knowledge. The 
correct opinion, so far as it is true in matter though imperfect in 
form, stands rather midway between knowing and not-knowing, 
and participates in both. 

(3.) The Belaiion of Science to Thinking. — In opposition to 
the Protagorean sensualism, we have already referred to an energy 
of the soul independent of the sensuous perception and sensation, 
competent in itself to examine the universal, and grasp true being 
in thought. There is, therefore, a double source of knowledge, 
sensation and rational thinking. Sensation refers to that which 



PLATO. 87 

is conceived in the constant becoming and perpetual change, to 
the pure momentary, which is in an incessant transition from the 
was, through the now, into the shall be {Farm. p. 152) ; it is, 
therefore, the source of dim, impure, and uncertain knowledge ; 
thinking on the other hand refers to the abiding, which neither 
becomes nor departs, but remains ever the same. {Tim. p. 51.) 
Existence, says the Timaeus (p. 27) is of two kinds, " that which 
ever is but has no becoming, and that which ever becomes but 
never is. The one kind, which is always in the same state, is 
comprehended through reflection by the reason, the other, which 
becomes and departs, but never properly is, may be apprehended 
by the sensuous perception without the reason." True science, 
therefore, flows alone from that pure and thoroughly internal ac- 
tivity of the soul which is free from all corporeal qualities and 
every sensuous disturbance. {Phced. p. 65.) In this state the soul 
looks upon things purely as they are {Phced. p. 66) in their eter- 
nal being and their unchangeable condition. Hence the true 
state of the philosopher is announced in the Phaedon (p. 64) to 
be a willingness to die, a longing to fly from the body, .as from a 
hinderance to true knowledge, and become pure spirit. Accord- 
ing to all this, science is the thinking of true being or of ideas ; 
the means to discover and to know these ideas, or the organ for 
their apprehension is the dialectic, as the art of separating and com- 
bining conceptions ; the true objects of dialectics are ideas. 

3. The Doctrixe of Ideas in its Gtenesis. — The Platonic 
doctrine of ideas is the common product of the Socratic method 
of forming conceptions, the Heraclitic doctrine of absolute becom- 
ing, and the Eleatic doctrine of absolute being. To the first of 
these Plato owes the idea of a knowing through conceptions, to 
the second the recognition of the becoming in the field of the 
sensuous, to the third the position of a field of absolute reality. 
Elsewhere {in the Philehus) Plato connects the doctrine of ideas 
with the Pythagorean thought that every thing may be formed 
from unity and multiplicity, from the limit and the unlimited. 
The aim of the Theataetus, the Sophist, and the Parmenides is to 
refute the principles of the Eleatics and Heraclitics ; this refuta* 



bo A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion is effected in the Theatsetus "by combating directly the prin 
ciple of an absolute becoming, in the Sophist by combating 
directly the principle of abstract being, and in the Parmenides by 
taking up the Eleatic one and showing its true relations. We 
have already spoken of the Theataetus ; we will now look for the 
development of the doctrine of ideas in the Sophist and Par- 
menides. 

The ostensible end of the former of these dialogues is to show 
that the Sophist is really but a caricature of the philosopher, but 
its true end is to fix the reality of the appearance, i, e. of the not- 
being, and to discuss speculatively the relation of being and not- 
being. The doctrine of the Eleatics ended with the rejection of 
all sensuous knowledge, declaring that what we receive as the 
perception of a multiplicity of things or of a becoming is only an 
appearance. In this the contradiction was clear, the not-being 
was absolutely denied, and yet its existence was admitted in the 
notion of men. Plato at once draws attention to this contradic- 
tion, showing that a delusive opinion, which gives rise to a false 
image or representation, is not possible, since the whole theory 
rests upon the assumption that the false, the not -true, i, e, not- 
being cannot even be thought. This, Plato continues, is the great 
difficulty in thinking of not-being, that both he who denies and 
he who affirms its reality is driven to contradict himself. For 
though it is inexpressible and inconceivable either as one or as 
many, still, when speaking of it, we must attribute to it both being 
and multiplicity. If we admit that there is such a thing as a 
false opinion, we assume in this very fact the notion of not-being, 
for only that opinion can be said to be false which supposes either 
the not-being to be, or makes that, which is not, to be. In short, 
if there actually exists a false notion, so does there actually and 
truly exist a not-being. After Plato had thus fixed the reality of 
not-being, he discusses the relation of being and not-being, i. e. 
the relation of conceptions generally in their combinations and 
differences. If not-being has no less reality than being, and being 
no more than not-being, if, therefore, e. g. the not-great is as truly 
real as the great, then every conception may be apprehended ac- 



PLATO. 89 

cording to its opposite sides as being and not-being at tbe same 
time : it is a being in reference to itself, as something identical 
with itself, but it is not-being in reference to every one of the 
numberless other conceptions which can be referred to it, and 
with which, on account of its difference from them, it can have 
nothing in common. The conception of the same (ravTov) and the 
different {^drepov) represent the general form of an antithesis. 
These are the universal formulae of combination for all concep- 
tions. This reciprocal relation of conceptions as at the same time 
being and not-being, by virtue of which they can be arranged 
among themselves, forms now the basis for the art of dialectics, 
which has to judge what conceptions can and what cannot be 
joined together. Plato illustrates here by taking the conceptions 
of being, motion (becoming), and rest (existence), and showing 
what are the results of the combinations of these ideas. The 
conceptions of motion and rest cannot well be joined together, 
though both of them may be joined with that of being, since both 
are; the conception of rest is therefore in reference to itself a 
being, but in reference to the conception of motion a not-being or 
different. Thus the Platonic doctrine of ideas, after having in 
the Theataetus attained its general foundation in fixing the objec- 
tive reality of conceptions, becomes now still farther developed in 
the Sophist to a doctrine of the agreement and disagreement of 
conceptions. The category which conditions these reciprocal re- 
lations is that of not-being or difference. This fundamental 
thought of the Sophist, that being is not without not-being and 
not-being is not without being, may be expressed in modern phra- 
seology thus : negation is not not-being but determinateness, and 
on the other hand all determinateness and concreteness of concep- 
tions, or every thing affirmative can be only through negation ; 
in other words the conception of contradiction is the soul of a 
philosophical method. 

The doctrine of ideas appears in the Parmenides as the positive 
consequence and progressive development of the Eleatic princi- 
ple. Indeed in this dialogue, in that Plato makes Parmenides the 
chief speaker, he seems willing to allow that his doctrine is in 



90 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. JfH j 

substance that of the Eleatic sage. True, the fundamental 
thought of the dialogue — that the one is not conceivable in its 
complete singleness without the many, nor the many without the 
one, that each necessarily presupposes and reciprocally conditions 
the other — ^stands in the most direct contradiction to Eleaticism. 
Yet Parmenides himself, by dividing his poem into two parts, and 
treating in the first of the one and in the second of the many, 
postulates an inner mediation between these two externally so dis- 
jointed parts of his philosophy, and in this respect the Platonic 
theory of ideas might give itself out as the farther elimination, 
and the true sense of the Parmenidean philosophizing. This dia- 
lectical mediation between the one and the not-one or the many 
Plato now attempts in four antinomies, which have ostensibly only 
a negative result in so far as they show that contradictions arise 
both whether the one be adopted or rejected. The positive sense 
of these antinomies, though it can be gained only through infer- 
ences which Plato himself does not expressly utter, but leaves to 
be drawn by the reader — is as follows. The first antinomy shows 
that the one is inconceivable as such since it is only apprehended 
in its abstract opposition to the many ; the second, that in this 
case also the reality of the many is inconceivable ; the third, that 
the one or the idea cannot be conceived as* not-being, since there 
can be neither conception nor predicate of the absolute not-being, 
and since, if not-being is excluded from all fellowship with being, 
all becoming and departing, all similarity and difference, every 
representation and explanation concerning it must also be denied ; 
and lastly, the fourth affirms that the not-one or the many cannot 
be conceived without the one or the idea. What now is Plato's 
aim in this discussion of the dialectic relations between the con- 
ceptions of the one and the many ? Would he use the conception 
of the one only as an example to explain his dialectic method 
with conceptions, or is the discussion of this conception itself the 
very object before him ? Manifestly the latter, or the dialogue 
j3nds without result and without any inner connection of its two 
parts. But how came Plato to make such a special investigation 
of this conception of the one ? If we bear in mind that the 



PLATO. 91 

Eleatics had already perceived the antithesis of the actual and 
the phenomenal world in the antithesis of the one and the many, 
and that Plato himself had also regarded his ideas as the unity 
of the manifold, as the one and the same in the many — since he 
repeatedly uses " idea " and "the one" in the same sense, and 
places {Re;p, VII. 537) dialectics in the same rank with the 
faculty of bringing many to unity — then is it clear that the one 
which is made an object of investigation in the Parmenides is the 
idea in its general sense, i. e. in its logical form, and that Plato 
consequently in the dialectic of the one and the many would repre- 
sent the dialectic of the idea and the phenomenal world, or in other 
words would dialectically determine and establish the correct view 
of the idea as the unity in the manifoldness of the phenomenal. 
In that it is shown in the Parmenides, on the one side, that the 
many cannot be conceived without the one, and on the other side, 
that the one must be something which embraces in itself mani- 
foldness, so have we the ready inference on the one side, that the 
phenomenal world, or the many, has a true being only in so far 
as it has the one or the conception within it, and on the other 
side, that since the conception is not an abstract one but mani- 
foldness in unity, it must actually have manifoldness in unity in 
order to be able to be in the phenomenal world. The indirect 
result of the Parmenides is that matter as the infinitely divisible 
and undetermined mass has no actuality, but is in relation to the 
ideal world a not-being, and though the ideas as the true being 
gain their appearance in it, yet the idea itself is all that is actual 
in the appearance or phenomenon ; the phenomenal world derives 
its whole existence from the ideal world which appears in it, and 
has a being only so far as it has a conception or idea for its con- 
tent. 

4. Positive Exposition of the Doctrine of Ideas. — Ideas 
may be defined according to the different sides of their historical 
connection, as the common in the manifold, the universal in the 
particular, the one in the many, or the constant and abiding in the 
changing. Subjectively they are principles of knowing which 
c \ot be derived from experience they are the intuitively cer- 



92 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tain and innate regulators of our knowledge. Objectively itey 
are the immutable principles of being and of the phenomenal 
world, incorporeal and simple unities which have no relation to 
space, and which may be predicated of every independent thing. 
The doctrine of ideas grew originally out of the desire to give a 
definite conception to the inner essence of things, and make the 
real world conceivable as a harmoniously connected intellectual 
world. This desire of scientific knowledge Aristotle cites ex- 
pressly as the motive to the Platonic doctrine of ideas. " Plato," 
he says (Metaph, XIII. 4), " came to the doctrine of ideas be- 
cause he was convinced of the truth of the Heraclitic view which 
regarded the sensible world as a ceaseless flowing and changing. 
His conclusion from this was, that if there be a science of any 
thing there must be, besides the sensible, other substances which 
have a permanence, for there can be no science of the fleeting." 
It is, therefore, the idea of science which demands the reality of 
ideas, a demand which cannot be granted unless an idea or con- 
ception is also the ground of all being. This is the case with 
Plato. According to him there can be neither a true knowing 
nor a true being without ideas and conceptions which have an 
independent reality. 

What now does Plato mean by idea ? From what has already 
been said it is clear that he means something more than ideal con- 
ceptions of the beautiful and the good. An idea is found, as the 
name itself {elSos) indicates, wherever a universal conception of a 
species or kind is found. Hence Plato speaks of the idea of a 
bed, table, strength, health, voice, color, ideas of simple relations 
and properties, ideas of mathematical figures, and even ideas of 
not-being, and of that, which in its essence only contradicts the 
idea, baseness and vice. In a word, we may put an idea wherever 
many things may be characterized by a common name {Sep. X. 
596) : or as Aristotle expresses it (Met. XII. 3). Plato places 
an idea to every class of being. In this sense Plato himself 
speaks in the beginning of the Parmenides. Parmenides asks the 
young Socrates what he calls ideas. Socrates answers by naming 
unconditionally the moral ideas, the ideas of the true, the beauti- 



PLATO. 93 

fill, the good, and then after a little delay lie mentions some physi- 
cal ones, as ^le ideas of man, of fire, of water ; he will not allow 
ideas to be predicated of that which is only a formless mass, or 
which is a part of something else, as hair, mud and clay, but in 
this he is answered by Parmenides, that if he would be fully im- 
bued with philosophy, he must not consider such things as these 
to be wholly despicable, but should look upon them as truly 
though remotely participating in the idea. Here at least the 
claim is asserted that no province of being is excluded from the 
idea, that even that which appears most accidental and irrational 
is yet a part of rational knowledge, in fact that every thing ex- 
isting may be brought within a rational conception. 

5. The relation of Ideas to the Phenomenal World. 
Analogous to the different definitions of idea are the different 
names which Plato gives to the sensible and phenomenal world. 
He calls it the many, the divisible, the unbounded, the undeter- 
mined and measureless, the becoming, the relative, great and small, 
not-being. The relation now in which these two worlds of sense 
and of ideas stand to each other is a question which Plato has 
answered neither fully nor consistently with himself. His most 
common way is to characterize the relation of things to concep- 
tions as a participant, or to call things the copies and adumbra- 
tions, while ideas are the archetypes. Yet this is so indefinite 
that Aristotle properly says that to talk in this way is only to 
use poetical metaphors. The great difficulty of the doctrine of 
ideas is not solved but only increased by these figurative repre- 
sentations. The difficulty lies in the contradiction which grows 
out of the fact that while Plato admits the reality of the becom- 
ing and of the province of the becoming, he still affirms that ideas 
which are substances ever at rest and ever the same are the only 
actual. Now in this Plato is formally consistent with himself, 
while he characterizes the materiel of matter not as a positive 
substratum but as not-being, and guards himself with the express 
affirmation that he does not consider the sensible as being, but 
only as something similar to being. {Rejp, X. 597.) The position 
laid down in the Parmenides is also consistent with this, that a 



&4 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

perfect philosophy should look upon the idea as the cognizable in 
the phenomenal world, and should follow it out in the smallest 
particulars until every part of being should be known and all 
dualism removed. In fine, Plato in many of his expressions 
seems to regard the world of sensation only as a subjective ap- 
pearance, as a product of the subjective notion, as the result of a 
confused way of representing ideas. In this sense the phenomena 
are entirely dependent on ideas ; they are nothing but the ideas 
themselves in the form of not being ; the phenomenal world de- 
rives its whole existence from the ideal world which appears in it. 
But yet when Plato calls the sensible a mingling of the same 
with the different or the not-being {Tim. p. 35), when he charac- 
terizes the ideas as vowels which go through every thing like a 
chain {Soph. p. 253), when he himself conceives the possibility 
that matter might offer opposition to the formative energy of 
ideas {Tim. p. 56), when he speaks of an evil soul of the world 
{de Leg. X. 896), and gives intimations of the presence in the 
world of a principle in nature hostile to God (Polit. p. 268), 
when he in the Phaedon treats of the relation between body and 
soul as one wholly discordant and malignant, — in all this there 
is evidence enough, even after allowing for the mythical form of 
the Timaeus, and the rhetorical composition which prevails in the 
Phasdon, to substantiate the contradiction mentioned above. 
This is most clear in the TimaQus. Plato in this dialogue makes 
the sensible world to be formed by a Creator after the pattern of 
an idea, but in this he lays down as a condition that this Demi* 
urge or Creator should find at hand a something which should be 
apt to receive and exhibit this ideal image. This something 
Plato compares to the matter which is fashioned by the artisan 
(whence the later name hyle). He characterizes it as wholly un- 
determined and formless, but possessing in itself an aptitude for 
every variety of forms, an invisible and shapeless thing, a some- 
thing which it is difiicult to characterize, and which Plato even 
does not seem inclined very closely to describe. In this the 
actuality of matter is denied ; while Plato makes it equivalent to 
space it is only the place, the negative condition of the sensible 



PLATO. 95 

while it possesses a being only as it receives in itself the ideal 
form. Still matter remains the objective and phenomenal form 
of the idea : the visible world arises only through the mingling 
of ideas with this substratum, and if matter be metaphysically 
expressed as ^^ the different," then does it follow with logical ne- 
cessity in a dialectical discussion that it is just as truly being as 
not-being. Plato does not conceal from himself this difficulty, 
and therefore attempts to represent with comparisons and images 
this presupposition of a hyle which he finds it as impossible to do 
without as to express in a conceivable form. If he would do 
without it he must rise to the conception of an absolute creation, 
or consider matter as an ultimate emanation from the absolute 
spirit, or else explain it as appearance only. Thus the Platonic 
system is only a fruitless struggle against dualism. 

6. The idea of the Good and the Deity. If the true and 
the real is exhibited in general conceptions which are so related 
to each other that every higher conception embraces and combines 
under it several lower, so that any one starting from a single idea 
may eventually discover all {Meno, p. 81), then must the sum of 
ideas form a connected organism and succession in which the 
lower idea appears as a stepping-stone and presupposition to a 
higher. This succession must have its end in an idea which needs 
no higher idea or presupposition to sustain it. This highest idea, 
the ultimate limit of all knowledge, and itself the independent 
ground of all other ideas, Plato calls the idea of the good, i. e, 
not of the moral but of the metaphysical good. {Bep. VII. 517.) 

What this good is in itself, Plato undertakes to show only in 
images. " In the same manner as the sun," he says in the Repub- 
lic (VI. 506), " is the cause of sight, and the cause not merely that 
objects are visible but also that they grow and are produced, so 
the good is of such power and beauty, that it is not merely the 
cause of science to the soul, but is also the cause of being and 
reality to whatever is the object of science, and as the sun is not 
itself sight or the object of sight but presides over both, so the 
good is not science and truth but is superior to both, they being 
not the good itself but of a goodly nature." The good has uncon- 



96 



A inSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



ditioned worth, and gives to every other thing all the value it 
possesses. The idea of the good excludes all presupposition. It 
is the ultimate ground at the same time of knowing and of being, 
of the perceiver and the perceived, of the subjective and the ob- 
jective, of the ideal and the real, though exalted itself above such 
a division. [Rep, VI. 508-517.) Plato, however, has not attempt- 
ed a derivation of the remaining ideas from the idea of the good ; 
his course here is wholly an empirical one ; a certain class of 
objects are taken, and having referred these to their common 
essence this is given out as their idea. He has treated the indi- 
vidual conceptions so independently, and has made each one so 
complete in itself, that it is impossible to find a proper division or 
establish an immanent continuation of one into another. 

It is difficult to say precisely what relation this idea of the 
good bore to the Deity in the Platonic view. Taking every thing 
together it seems clear that Plato regarded the two as identical, 
but whether he conceived this highest cause to be a personal being 
or not is a question which hardly admits of a definite answer. 
The logical result of his system would exclude the personality of 
God. If only the universal (the idea) is the true being, then can 
the only absolute idea, the Deity, be only the absolute universal ; 
but that Plato was himself conscious of this logical conclusion we 
can hardly affirm, any more than we can say on the other hand that 
he was clearly a theist. For whenever in a mythical or popular 
statement he speaks of innumerable gods, this only indicates that 
he is speaking in the language of the popular religion, and when 
he speaks in an accurate philosophical sense, he only makes the 
relation of the personal deity with the idea a very uncertain one. 
Most probable, therefore, is it that this whole question concerning 
the personality of God was not yet definitely before him, that he 
took up the religious idea of God and defended it in ethical 
interest against the anthropomorphism of the mythic poets, that 
he sought to establish it by arguments drawn from the evidences 
of design in nature, and the universal prevalence of a belief in a 
God, while as a philosopher he made no use of it. 

V. The Platonic Physics. 1. Nature. — The connection 



PLATO. 97 

between the Physics and the Dialectics of Plato lies principally 
in two points — the conception of becoming, which forms the chief 
property of nature, and that of real being, which is at once the all 
sufficient and good, and the true end of all becoming. Because 
nature belongs to the province of irrational sensation we cannot 
look for the same accuracy in the treatment of it, as is furnished 
in dialectics. Plato therefore applied himself with much less zest 
to physical investigations than to those of an ethical or dialectical 
character, and indeed only attended to them in his later years. 
Only in one dialogue, the Timaeus, do we find any extended evo- 
lution of physical doctrines, and even here Plato seems to have 
gone to his work with much less independence than his wont, this 
dialogue being more strongly tinctured with Pythagoreanism than 
any other of his writings. The difficulty of the Timaeus is in- 
creased by the mythical form on which the old commentators 
themselves have stumbled. If we take the first impression that 
it gives us, we have, before the creation of the world, a Creator as 
a moving and a reflecting principle, with on the one side the ideal 
world existing immovable as the eternal archetype, and on the 
other side, a chaotic, formless, irregular, fluctuating mass, which 
holds in itself the germ of the material world, but has no deter- 
mined character nor substance. With these two elements the 
Creator now blends the world-soul which he distributes according 
to the relation of numbers, and sets it in definite and harmonious 
motion. In this way the material world, which has become actual 
through the arrangement of the chaotic mass into the four ele- 
ments, finds its external frame, and the process thus begun is 
completed in its external structure by the formation of the organic 
world. 

It is difficult to s:parate the mythical and the philosophical 
elements in this cosmogony of the Timaeus, especially difficult to 
determine how far the historical construction, which gives a suc- 
cession in time to the acts of creation, is only a formal one, and 
also how far the affirmation that matter is absolutely a not-being 
can be harmonized with the general tenor of Plato's statements. 
The significance of the world-soul is clearer. Since the soul in 
5 



98 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the Platonic system is the mean between spirit and body, and as 
in the same way mathematical relations, in their most universal 
expression as numbers, are the mean between mere sensuous ex- 
istence and the pure idea (between the one and the many as Plato 
expresses it), it would seem clear that the world-soul, construed 
according to the relation of numbers, must express the relation of 
the world of ideas to that of sense, in other words, that it denotes 
the sensible world as a thought represented in the form of material 
existence. The Platonic view of nature, in opposition to the 
mechanical attempts to explain it of the earlier philosophers, is 
entirely teleological, and based upon the conception of the good, 
or, on the moral idea. Plato conceives the world as the image of 
the good, as the work of the divine munificence. As it is the 
image of the perfect it is therefore only one, corresponding to the 
idea of the single all-embracing substance, for an infinite number 
of worlds is not to be conceived as actual. For the same reason 
the world is spherical, after the most perfect and uniform struc- 
ture, which embraces in itself all other forms ; its movement is in 
a circle, because this, by returning into itself, is most like the 
movement of reason. The particular points of the Timseus, the 
derivation of the four elements, the separation of the seven planets 
according to the musical scale, the opinion that the stars were im- 
mortal and heavenly substances, the affirmation that the earth 
holds an abiding position in the middle of the world, a view which 
subsequently became elaborated to the Ptolemaic system, the re- 
ference of all material figures to the triangle as the simplest plane 
figure, the division of inanimate nature, according to the four ele- 
ments, into creatures of earth, water, and air, his discussions re- 
specting organic nature, and especially respecting the construction 
of the human body — all these we need here only mention. Their 
philosophical worth consists not so much in their material content, 
but rather in their fundamental idea, that the world should be 
conceived as the image and the work of reason, as an organism 
of order, harmony, and beauty, as the good actualizing itself 

2. The Soul. — The doctrine of the soul, considering it simply 
as the basis of a moral action, and leaving out of view all ques- 



PLATO. 99 

tions of concrete ethics, forms a constituent element in the Pla- 
tonic physics. Since the soul is united to the body, it participates 
in the motions and changes of the body, and is, in this respect, 
related to the perishable. But in so far as it participates in the 
knowledge of the eternal, i. e. in so far as it knows ideas, does 
there live within it a divine principle — reason. Accordingly, 
Plato distinguishes two components of the soul — the divine and the 
mortal, the rational and the irrational. These two are united by 
an intermediate link, which Plato calls ^vfxos or spirit, and which, 
though allied to reason is not reason itself, since it is often exhibi- 
ted in children and also in brutes, and since even men are often car- 
ried away by it without reflection. This threefol dness, here exhibited 
psychologically, is found, in different applications, through all the 
last general period of Plato's literary life. Based upon the anthro- 
pological triplicate of reason, soul and body, it corresponds also to 
the division of theoretical knowledge into science (or thinking), 
correct opinions (or sense-perception), and ignorance, to the triple 
ladder of eroticism in the Symposium and the mythological repre- 
sentation connected with this of Poros, Eros, and Penia ; to the 
metaphysical triplicate of the ideal world, mathematical relations 
and the sensible world ; and furnishes ground for deriving the 
ethical division of virtue and the political division of ranks. 

So far as the soul is a mean between the spiritual and cor- 
poreal, may we connect the Phaedon's proofs of its immortality 
with the psychological view now before us. The common thought 
of these arguments is that the soul, in its capacity for thinking, 
participates in the reason, and being thus of an opposite nature to, 
and uncontrolled by the corporeal, it may have an independent 
existence. The arguments are wholly analytical, and possess no 
valid and universal proof ; they proceed entirely upon a petitio 
principii, they are derived partly from mythical philosophemes, 
and manifest not only an obscure conception of the soul, but of its 
relations to the body and the reason, and, so far as the relation of 
the soul to the ideal world is in view, they furnish in the best case 
only some proof for the immortality of him who has raised his 
soul to a pure spirit, i. e. the immortality of the philosopher. Plato 



100 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

was not himself deceived as to the theoretical insufficiency of his 
arguments. Their number would show this, and, besides, he ex- 
pressly calls them proofs which amount to only human probability, 
and furnish practical postulates alone. With this view he intro- 
duces at the close of his arguments the myth of the lower world, 
and the state of departed souls, in order, by complying with the 
religious notions, and tradition;? of his countrymen, to gain a pos- 
itive support for belief in the soul's immortality. Elsewhere 
Plato also speaks of the lower world, and of the future rewards 
and punishments of the good and the evil, m accordance with the 
popular notions, as though he saw the elements of a divine revela- 
tion therein ; he tells of purifying punishment in Hades, analo- 
gous to a purgatory ; he avails himself of the common notion to 
affirm that shades still subject to the corporeal principle will 
hover after death over their graves, seeking to recover their life- 
less bodies, and at times he dilates upon the migration of the soul 
to various human and brute forms. On the whole, we find in 
Plato^s proofs of immortality, as in his psychology generally, that 
dualism, which here expresses itself as hatred to the corporeal, 
and is connected with the tendency to seek the ultimate ground 
of evil in the nature of the '' different" and the sensible world. 

VI. The Platonic Ethics. — The ground idea of the good, 
which in physics served only as an inventive conception, finds 
now, in the ethics, its true exhibition. Plato has developed it 
prominently according to three sides, as good, as individual virtue, 
and as ethical world in the state. The conception of duty re- 
mains in the background with him as with the older philosophers. 

1. Good and Pleasure. — That the highest good can be noth- 
ing other than the idea of the good itself, has already been shown 
in the dialectics, where this idea was suffered to appear as the ulti- 
mate end of all our striving. But since the dialectics represent 
the supreme good as unattainable by human reason, and only cog 
nizable in its different modes of manifestation, we can, therefore, 
only follow these different manifestations of the highest good, 
which represent not the good itself, but the good in becoming, 
where it appears as science, truth, beauty, virtue, &c. We are 



PLATO. 101 

thus not required to be equal to God, but only like him [TTiecet,) 
It is this point of view which lies at the basis of the graduated 
table of good, given in the Philebus. 

In seeking the highest good, the conception of pleasure must 
be investigated. The Platonic stand-point here is the attempt to 
strike a balance between Hedonism, (the Cyrenian theory that 
pleasure is the highest good, cf. ^ XIII. 3), and Cynicism. While 
he will not admit with Aristippus that pleasure is the true good, 
neither will he find it as the Cynics maintain, simply in the nega- 
tion of its contrary, pain, and thus deny that it belongs to the 
good things of human life. He finds his refutation of Hedonism 
in the indeterminateness and relativity of all pleasure, since that 
which at one time may seem as pleasure, under other circum- 
stances may appear as pain ; and since he who chooses pleasure 
without distinction, will find impure pleasures always combined 
in his life with more or less of pain ; his refutation of Cynicism 
he establishes by showing the necessary connection between virtue 
and true pleasure, showing that there is a true and enduring plea- 
sure, the pleasure of reason, found in the possession of truth and 
of goodness, while a rational condition separate from all pleasure, 
cannot be the highest good of a finite being. It is most promi- 
nently by this distinction of a true and false, of a pure and im- 
pure pleasure, that Plato adjusts the controversy of the two 
Socratic schools. — A detailed exhibition of the Philebus we must 
here omit. — On the whole, in the Platonic apprehension of plea- 
sure, we cannot but notice that same vacillation with which Plato 
every where treats of the relation between the corporeal and the 
spiritual, at one time considering the former as a hindrance to the 
latter, and at another as its serving instrument ; now, regarding it 
as a concurring cause to the good, and then, as the ground of all 
evil ; here, as something purely negative, and there, as a positive 
substratum which supports all the higher intellectual develop- 
ments; and in conformity with this, pleasure is also considered at 
one time as something equivalent to a moral act, and to knowl- 
edge, and at another as the means and accidental consequence of 
the good. 



102 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

2. Virtue. — In his theory of virtue, Plato is wholly Socratic. 
He holds fast to the opinion that it is science [Protagoras]^ and 
therefore, teachable [Meno)^ and as to its unity, it follows from 
the dialectical principle that the one can be manifold, or the man- 
ifold one, that, therefore, virtue must both be regarded as one, 
and also in a different respect, as many. Plato thus brings out 
prominently the union and connection of all virtues, and is fond 
of painting, especially in the introductory dialogues, some single 
virtue as comprising in itself the sum of all the rest. Plato fol- 
lows for the most part the fourfold division of virtues, as popu- 
larly made ; and first, in the Republic (IV. 441), he attempts a 
scientific derivation of them, by referring to each of the three 
parts of the soul its appropriate virtue The virtue of the reason 
he calls prudence or wisdom, the directing or measuring virtue, 
without whose activity valor would sink to brute impulse, and 
calm endurance to stupid indifference ; the virtue of spirit is 
valor, the help-meet of reason, or spirit {^vixos) penetrated by 
science, which in the struggle against pleasure and pain, desire 
and fear, preserves the rational intelligence against the alarms 
with which sensuous desires, would seek to sway the soul ; the 
virtue of the sensuous desires, and which has to reduce these 
within true and proper grounds, is temperance, and that virtue in 
fine to which belong the due regulation and mutual adjustment of 
the several powers of the soul, and which, therefore, constitutes 
the bond and the unity of the three other virtues, is justice. 

In this last conception, that of justice, all the elements of 
moral culture meet together and centre, exhibiting the moral life 
of the individual as a perfect whole, and then, by requiring an 
application of the same principle to communities, the moral con- 
sideration is advanced beyond the narrow circle of individual 
life. Thus is established the whole of the moral world — Justice 
^' in great letters," the moral life in its complete totality, is the 
state. In this is first actualized the demand for the complete 
harmony of the human life. In and through the state comes the 
complete formation of matter for the reason. 

3. The State. — The Platonic state is generally regarded as 



PLATO. 103 

an ideal or chimera, whicli it is impracticable to realize among 
men. This view of the case has even been ascribed to Plato, and 
it has been said that in his Bepuhlic he attempted to sketch only 
a fine ideal of a state constitution, while in the Laws he traced 
out a practicable philosophy of the state from the stand-point of 
the common consciousness. But in the first place, this was not 
Plato's true meaning. Although he acknowledges that the state 
he describes cannot be found on earth, and has its archetype only 
in heaven, by which the philosopher ought to form himself (IX. 
592), still he demands that efforts should be made to realize it 
here, and he even attempts to show the conditions and means un- 
der which such a state could be made actual, not overlooking in 
all this the defects arising from the different characters and tem- 
peraments of men. A composition, dissociated from the idea, 
could only appear untrue to a philosopher like Plato, who saw 
the actual and the true only in the idea ; and the common view 
which supposes that he wrote his Eepublic in the full conscious- 
ness of its impracticability, mistakes entirely the stand-point of 
the Platonic philosophy. Still farther the question whether such 
a state as the Platonic is attainable and the best, is generally per- 
verted. The Platonic state is the Grecian state-idea given in a 
narrative form. It is no vain and powerless ideal to picture the 
idea as a rational principle in every moment of the world's history, 
since the idea itself is that which is absolutely actual, that which 
is essential and necessary in existing things. The truly ideal 
ought not to be actual, but is actual, and the only actual ; if an 
idea were too good for existence, or the empirical actuality too 
bad for it, then were this a fault of the ideal itself. Plato has 
not given himself up merely to abstract theories ; the philosopher 
cannot leap beyond his age, but can only see and grasp it in its 
true content. This Plato has done. His stand-point is his own 
age. He looks upon the political life of the Greeks as then exist- 
ing, and it is this life, exalted to its idea, which forms the real 
content of the Platonic Kepublic. Plato has here represented 
the Grecian morality in its substantial condition. If the Platonic 
Republic seems prominently an ideal which can never be realized, 



104 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

this IS owing much less to its ideality than to the defects of 
the old political life. The most prominent characteristic of the 
Hellenic conception of the state, before the Greeks began to fall 
into unbridled licentiousness, was the constraint thrown upon 
personal subjective freedom, in the sacrifice of every individual 
interest to the absolute sovereignty of the state. With Plato 
also, the state is every thing. His political institutions, so loudly 
ridiculed by the ancients, are only the undeniable consequences 
following from the very idea of the Grecian state, which allowed 
neither to the individual citizen nor to a corporation, any lawful 
sphere of action independent of itself. 

The grand feature of the Platonic state is, as has been said, 
the exclusive sacrifice of the individual to the state, the reference 
of moral to political virtue. Since man cannot reach his complete 
development in isolation but only as a member of an organic soci- 
ety (the state), Plato therefore concludes that the individual pur- 
pose should wholly conform to the general aim, and that the state 
must represent a perfect and harmonious unity, and be a counterpart 
of the moral life of the individual. In a perfect state all things, 
joy and sorrow, and even eyes, ears and hands, must be common 
to all, so that the social life would be as it were the life of one 
man. This perfect universality and unity, can only be actualized 
when every thing individual and particular falls away, and hence 
the difficulty of the Platonic Republic. Private property and 
domestic life (in place of which comes a community of goods and 
of wives), the duty of education, the choice of rank and profession, 
the arts and sciences, all these must be subjected and placed un- 
der the exclusive and absolute control of the state. The individ- 
ual may lay claim only to that happiness which belongs to him as 
a constituent element of the state. From this point Plato goes 
down into the minutest particulars, and gives the closest directions 
respecting gymnastics and music, which form the two means of 
culture of the higher ranks ; respecting the study of mathematics, 
and philosophy, the choice of stringed instruments, and the proper 
measure of verse ; respecting bodily exercise and the service of 
women in war ; respecting marriage settlements, and the age at 



PLATO. 105 

which any one should study dialectics, marry, and beget children. 
The state with him is only a great educational establishment, a 
family in the mass. — Lyric poetry he would allow only under the 
inspection of competent judges. Epic and dramatic poetry, even 
Homer and Hesiod, should be banished from the state, since they 
rouse and lead astray the passions, and give unworthy representa- 
tions of the gods. Exhibitions of physical degeneracy or weak- 
ness should not be tolerated in the Platonic state ; deformed and 
sickly infants should be abandoned, and food and attention should 
be denied to the sick. — In all this we find the chief antithesis of 
the ancient to the modern state. Plato did not recognize the will 
and choice of the individual, and yet the individual has a right to 
demand this. The problem of the modern state has been to unite 
these two sides, to bring the universal end and the particular end 
of the individual into harmony, to reconcile the highest possible 
freedom of the conscious individual will, with the highest possible 
supremacy of the state. 

The political institutions of the Platonic state are decidedly 
aristocratic. Grown up in opposition to the extravagances of the 
Athenian democracy, Plato prefers an absolute monarchy to every 
other constitution, though this should have as its absolute ruler 
only the perfect philosopher. It is a well-known expression of his, 
that the state can only attain its end when philosophers become 
its rulers, or when its present rulers have carried their studies so 
far and so accurately, that they can unite philosophy with a super- 
intendence of public afi'airs (V. 473). His reason for claiming 
that the sovereign power should be vested only in one, is the fact 
that very few are endowed with political wisdom. This ideal of 
an absolute ruler who should be able to lead the state perfectly, 
Plato abandons in the Laivs^ in which work he shows his prefer- 
ence for a mixed constitution, embracing both a monarchical and 
an aristocratic element. From the aristocratic tendency of the 
Platonic ideal of a state, follows farther the sharp division of 
ranks, and the total exclusion of the third rank from a proper 
political life. In reality Plato makes but two classes in his state, 
the subjects and the sovereign, analogous to his twofold psycho- 



106 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

logical division of sensible and intellectual, mortal and immortal , 
but as in psychology lie had introduced a middle step, spirit, to 
stand between his two divisions there, so in the state he brings in 
the military class between the ruler and those intended to supply 
the bodily wants of the community. We have thus three ranks, 
that of the ruler, corresponding to the reason, that of the watcher 
or warrior, answering to spirit, and that of the craftsman, which 
is made parallel to the appetites or sensuous desires. To these 
three ranks belong three separate functions : to the first, that of 
making the law and caring for the general good ; to the second, 
that of defending the public welfare from attacks of external foes ; 
and to the third, the care of separate interests and wants, as agri- 
culture, mechanics, &c. From each of these three ranks and its 
functions the state derives a peculiar virtue — wisdom from the 
ruler, bravery from the warrior, and temperance from the crafts- 
man, so far as he lives in obedience to his rulers. In the proper 
union of these three virtues is found the justice of the state, a 
virtue which is thus the sum of all other virtues. Plato pays 
little attention to the lowest rank, that of the craftsman, who exists 
in the state only as means. He held that it was not necessary to 
give laws and care for the rights of this portion of the community. 
The separation between the ruler and the warrior is not so broad. 
Plato suffers these two ranks to interpenetrate each other, and 
analogous to his original psychological division, as though the 
reason were but spirit in the highest step of its development, ha 
makes the oldest and the best of the warriors rise to the dignity 
and power of the rulers. The education of its warriors should 
therefore be a chief care of the state, in order that their spirit, 
though losing none of its peculiar energy, may yet be penetrated 
by reason. The best endowed by nature and culture among the 
warriors, may be selected at the age of thirty, and put upon a 
course of careful training. When he has reached the age of fifty 
and looked upon the idea of the good, he may be bound to actual- 
ize this archetype in the state, provided always that every one 
wait his turn, ai d spend his remaining time in philosophy. Only 
thus can the state be raised to the unconditioned rule of reason 
under the supremacy of the good. 



THE OLD ACADEMY. 107 

SECTION XV. 

THE OLD ACADEMY. 

In the old Academy, we lose the presence of inventive genius ; 
with few exceptions we find here no movements of progress, but 
rather a gradual retrogression of the Platonic philosophizing. 
After the death of Plato, Speusippus, his nephew and disciple, 
held the chair of his master in the Academy during eight years. 
He was succeeded by Xenocrates, after whom we meet with Polemo, 
Crates, and Crantor. It was a time in which schools for high 
culture were established, and the older teacher yielded to his 
younger successor the post of instruction. The general charac- 
teristics of the old Academy, so far as can be gathered from the 
scanty accounts, were great attention to learning, the prevalence 
of Pythagorean elements, especially the doctrine of numbers, and 
lastly, the reception of fantastic and demonological notions, among 
which the worship of the stars played a part. The prevalence 
of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers in the later instruc- 
tions of the Academy, gave to mathematical sciences, particularly 
arithmetic and astronomy, a high place, and at the same time as- 
signed to the docrine of ideas a much lower position than Plato 
had given it. Subsequently, the attempt was made to get back 
to the unadulterated doctrine of Plato. Crantor is said to be the 
first editor of the Platonic writings. 

As Plato was the only true Socraticist, so was Aristotle the 
only genuine disciple of Plato, though often abused by his fellow- 
disciples as unfaithful to his master's principles. 

We pass on at once to him, without stopping now to inquire 
into his relation to Plato, or the advance which he made beyond 
his predecessor, since these points will come up before us in the 
exhibition of the Aristotelian philosophy. {See ^ XVI : III. 1.) 



108 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SECTIONXVI. 

AKISTOTLE. 

I. Life and Writings of Aristotle. — Aristotle was born 
384 B. C. at Stagira, a Greek colony in Thrace. His father, 
Nicomachus, was a physician, and the friend of Amyntas, king 
of Macedonia. The former fact may have had its influence in 
determining the scientific direction of the son, and the latter may 
have procured his subsequent summons to the Macedonian court. 
Aristotle at a very early age lost both his parents. In his seven- 
teenth year he came to Plato at Athens, and continued with him 
twenty years. On account of his indomitable zeal for study, 
Plato named him " the Teacher," and said, upon comparing him 
with Xenocrates, that the latter required the spur, the former the 
bit. Among the many charges made against his character, most 
prominent are those of jealousy and ingratitude towards his mas- 
ter, but most of the anecdotes in which these charges are embo- 
died merit little credence. It is certain that Aristotle, after 
the death of Plato, stood in friendly relations with Xenocrates ; 
still, as a writer, he can hardly be absolved from a certain want 
of friendship and regard towards Plato and his philosophy, 
though all this can be explained on psychological grounds. Af- 
ter Plato's death, Aristotle went with Xenocrates to Hermeas, 
tyrant of Atarneus, whose sister Pythias he married after Her- 
meas had fallen a prey to Persian violence. After the death of 
Pythias he is said to have married his concubine, Herpyllis, who 
was the mother of his son Nicomachus. In the year 343 he was 
called by Philip of Macedon, to take the charge of the education 
of his son Alexander, then thirteen years old. Both father and 
son honored him highly, and the latter, with royal munificence, 
subsequently supported him in his studies. When Alexander 
went to Persia, Aristotle betook himself to Athens, and taught 
in the Lyceum, the only gymnasium then vacant, since Xenocrates 
had possession of the Academy, and the Cynics of the Cyno- 



ARISTOTLE. 109 

saerges. From the shady walks (TreptTrarot) of the Lyceum, in 
which Aristotle was accustomed to walk and expound his philos- 
ophy, his school received the name of the Peripatetic. Aristotle 
is said to have spent his mornings with his more mature disciples, 
exercising them in the profoundest questions of philosophy, while 
his evenings were occupied with a greater number of pupils in a 
more general and preparatory instruction. The former investiga- 
tions were called acroamatic, the latter exoteric. He abode at 
Athens, and taught thirteen years, and then, after the death of 
Alexander, whose displeasure he had incurred, he is said to have 
been accused by the Athenians of impiety towards the gods, and 
to have fled to Chalcis, in order to escape a fate similar to that 
of Socrates. He died in the year 322 at Chalcis, in Eubsea. 

Aristotle left a vast number of writings, of which the smaller 
(perhaps a fourth), but unquestionably the more important portion 
have come down to us, though in a form which cannot be received 
without some scruples. The story of Strabo about the fate of 
the Aristotelian writings, and the injury which they suff'ered in 
a cellar at Scepsis, is confessedly a fable, or at least limited to 
the original manuscripts; but the fragmentary and descriptive 
form which many among them, and even the most important {e. cj, 
the metaphysics) possess, the fact that scattered portions of one 
and the same work (e. g. the ethics) are repeatedly found in dif- 
ferent treatises, the irregularities and striking contradictions in 
one and the same writing, the disagreement found in other par- 
ticulars among difi'erent works, and the distinction made by Aris- 
totle himself between acroamatic and exoterical writings, all this 
gives reason to believe that we have, for the most part, before us 
only his oral lectures written down, and subsequently edited by 
his scholars. 

II. Universal Character and Division of the Aristote- 
lian Philosophy. — With Plato, philosophy had been national in 
both its form and content, but with Aristotle, it loses its Hellenic 
peculiarity, and becomes universal in scope and meaning ; the 
Platonic dialogue changes into barren prose ; a rigid, artistic 
language takes the place of the mythical and poetical dress ; the 



110 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thinking which had been with Plato intuitive, is with Aristotle 
discursive ; the immediate beholding of reason in the former, be- 
comes reflection and conception in the latter. Turning away 
from the Platonic unity of all being, Aristotle prefers to direct 
his attention to the manifoldness of the phenomenal ; he seeks 
the idea only in its concrete actualization, and consequently grasps 
the particular far more prominently in its peculiar determinate- 
ness and reciprocal difi"erences, than in its connection with the 
idea. He embraces with equal interest the facts given in nature, 
in history, and in the inner life of man. But he ever tends 
toward the individual, he must ever have a fact given in order to 
develop e his thought upon it ; it is always the empirical, the ac- 
tual, which solicits and guides his speculation ; his whole course 
is a description of the facts given, and only merits the name of a 
philosophy because it comprehends the empirical in its totality 
and synthesis ; because it has carried out its induction to the far- 
thest extent. Only because he is the absolute empiricist may 
Aristotle be called the truly philosopher. 

This character of the Aristotelian philosophy explains at the 
outset its encyclopedian tendency, inasmuch as every thing 
given in experience is equally worthy of regard and investigation. 
Aristotle is thus the founder of many courses of study unknown 
before him ; he is not only the father of logic, but also of natural 
history, empirical psychology, and the science of natural rights. 

This devotion of Aristotle to that which is given will also ex- 
plain his predominant inclination towards physics, for nature is the 
most immediate and actual. Connected also with this is the fact 
that Aristotle is the first among philosophers who has given to 
history and its tendencies an accurate attention. The first book 
of the Metaphysics is also the first attempt at a history of phi- 
losophy, as his politics is the first critical history of the difierent 
states and constitutions. In both these cases he brings out his 
own theory only as the consequence of that which has been his- 
torically given, basing it in the former case upon the works of his 
predecessors, and in the latter case upon the constitutions which 
lie before him. 



ARISTOTLE. Ill 

It is clear that according to this, the method of Aristotle must 
be a different one from that of Plato. Instead of proceeding like 
the latter, synthetically and dialectically, he pursues for the most 
part an analytic and regressive course, that is, going backward 
from the concrete to its ultimate ground and determination. 
While Plato would take his stand-point in the idea, in order to 
explain from this position and set in a clearer light that which is 
given and empirical, Aristotle on the other hand, starts with that 
which is given, in order to find and exhibit the idea in it. His 
method is, hence, induction; that is, the derivation of certain 
principles and maxims from a sum of given facts and phenomena ; 
his mode of procedure is, usually, argument, a barren balancing 
of facts, phenomena, circumstances and possibilities. He stands 
out for the most part only as the thoughtful observer. Renoun- 
cing all claim to universality and necessity in his results, he is con- 
tent to have brought out that which has an approximative truth, 
and the highest degree of probability. He often affirms that 
science does not simply relate to the changeless and necessary, but 
also to that which ordinarily takes place, that being alone ex- 
cluded from its province, which is strictly accidental. Philoso- 
phy, consequently, has with him the character and worth of a 
reckoning of probabilities, and his mode of exhibition assumes 
not unfrequently only the form of a doubtful deliberation. Hence 
there is no trace of the Platonic ideals, hence, also, his repugnance 
to a glowing and poetic style in philosophy, a repugnance which, 
while indeed it induces in him a fixed, philosophical terminology, 
also frequently leads him to mistake and misrepresent the opinions 
of his predecessors. Hence, also, in whatever he treated, his 
thorough adherence to that which is actually given. 

Connected in fine with the empirical character of the Aristo- 
telian philosophizing, is the fragmentary form of his writings, and 
their want of a systematic division and arrangement. Proceed- 
ing always in the line of that which is given, from individual to 
individual, he considers every province of the actual by itself, 
and makes it the subject of a separate treatise ; but he, for the 
most part, fails to indicate the lines by which the different parts 



112 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hang together, and are comprehended in a systematic whole. 
Thus he holds up a number of co-ordinate sciences, each one of 
which has an independent basis, but he fails to give us the highest 
science which embraces them all. The principle is sometimes 
affirmed that all the writings follow the idea of a whole ; but in 
their procedure there is such a want of all systematic connection, 
and every one of his writings is a monograph so thoroughly inde- 
pendmt and complete in itself, that we are sometimes puzzled to 
know what Aristotle himself received as a part of philosophy, and 
what he excluded. We are never furnished with an independent 
scheme or outline, we rarely find definite results or summary ex- 
planations, and even the different divisions of philosophy which 
he gives, vary essentially from one another. At one time he 
divides science into theoretical and practical, at another, he adds 
to these two a poetical creative science, while still again he speaks 
of the three parts of science, ethics, physics, and logic. At one 
time he divides the theoretical philosophy into logic and physics, 
and at another into theology, mathematics, and physics. But no 
one of these divisions has he expressly given as the basis on which 
to represent his system ; he himself places no value upon this 
method of division, and, indeed, openly declares himself opposed 
to it. It is, therefore, only for the sake of uniformity that we 
can give the preference here to the threefold division of philoso- 
phy as already adopted by Plato. 

III. Logic and Metaphysics. 1. Conception and Rela- 
tion OF THE Two. — The word metaphysics was first furnished by 
the Aristotelian commentators. Plato had used the term dialec- 
tics, and Aristotle had characterized the same thing as ^' first phi- 
losophy," while he calls physics the " second philosophy." The 
relation of this first philosophy to the other sciences Aristotle de- 
termines in the following way. Every science, he says, must have 
for investigation a determined province and separate form of being, 
but none of these sciences reaches the conception of being itself 
Hence there is needed a science which should investigate that 
which the other sciences take up hypothetically, or through ex- 
perience. This is done by the first philosophy which has to do 



ARISTOTLE. 113 

with being as such, while the other sciences relate only to deter- 
mined and concrete being. The metaphysics, which is this science 
of being and its primitive grounds, is the first philosophy, since 
it is presupposed by every other discipline. Thus, says Aristotle, 
if there were only a physical substance, then would physics be the 
first and the only philosophy, but if there be an immaterial and 
unmoved essence which is the ground of all being, then must there 
also be an antecedent, and because it is antecedent, a universal 
philosophy. The first ground of all being is Grod, whence Aris- 
totle occasionally gives to the first philosophy the name of theo- 
logy. 

It is difiicult to determine the relation between this first phi- 
losophy as the science of the ultimate ground of things, and that 
science which is ordinarily termed the logic of Aristotle, and 
which is exhibited in the writings bearing the name of the Orga- 
non. Aristotle himself has not accurately examined the relations 
of these two sciences, the reason of which is doubtless to be found 
in the incomplete form of the metaphysics. But since he has em- 
braced them both under the same name of logic, since the investi- 
gation of the essence of things (VII. 17), and the doctrine of 
ideas (XIII. 5), are expressly called logical, since he repeatedly 
attempts in the Metaphysics {Book IV.), to establish the logical 
principle of contradiction as an absolute presupposition for all 
thinking and speaking and philosophizing, and employs the me- 
thod of argument belonging to that science which has to do with 
the essence of things (III. 2. IV. 3), and since, in fine, the cate- 
gories to which he had already dedicated a separate book in the 
Organon are also discussed again in the Metaphysics {Booh V.), 
it follows that this much at least may be affirmed with certainty, 
that he would not absolutely separate the investigations of the 
Organon from those of the Metaphysics, and that he would not 
counsel the ordinary division of formal logic and metaphysics, 
although he has omitted to show more clearly their inner connec- 
tion. 

2. Logic. — The great problem both of the logical faculty and 
also of logic both as science and art, consists in this, viz., to form 



114 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and judge of conclusions, and through conclusions to be able to 
establish a proof. The conclusions, however, arise from proposi- 
tions, and the propositions from conceptions. According to this 
natural point of view, which lies in the very nature of the case, 
Aristotle has divided the content of the logical and dialectical 
doctrine contained in the different treatises of the Organon. The 

\ first treatise in the Organon is that containing the categories, a 
work which treats of the universal determinations of being, and 
gives the first attempt at an ontology. Of these categories Aris- 
totle enumerates ten ; essence, magnitude, quality, relation, the 
where, the when, position, habit, action, and passion. The second 

'V treatise (de interpretatione) investigates speech as the expression 
of thought, and discusses the doctrine of the parts of speech, pro- 

^. positions and judgments. The third are the analytic books, which 

r* show how conclusions may be referred back to their principles 
and arranged in order of their antecedence. The first Analytic 
contains in two books the universal doctrine of the Syllogism. 
Conclusions are according to their content and end either apodic- 
tic, which possess a certain and incontrovertible truth, or dialectic, 
which are directed toward that which may be disputed and is 
probable, or, finally, sophistic, which are announced deceptively 
as correct conclusions while they are not. The doctrine of apo- 
dictic conclusions and thus of proofs is given in the two books of 
the second Analytic, that of dialectic, is furnished in the eight 
books of the Topic, and that of sophistic in the treatise concern- 
ing " Sophistical Convictions." 

A closer statement of the Aristotelian logic would be familiar 
to every one, since the formal representations of this science ordi- 
narily given, employ for the most part only the material furnished 
by Aristotle. Kant has remarked, that since the time of the 
Grecian sage, logic has made neither progress nor retrogression. 
Only in two points has the formal logic of our time advanced be- 
yond that of Aristotle ; first, in adding to the categorical conclu- 
sion which was the only one Aristotle had in mind, the hypothetical 
and disjunctive, and second, in adding the fourth to the first three 
figures of conclusion. But the incompleteness of the Aristotelian 



ARISTOTLE. 115 

logic, which might be pardoned in the founder of this science, yet 
abides, and its thoroughly empirical method not only still con- 
tinues, but has even been exalted to a principle by making the 
antithesis, which Aristotle did not, between the form of a thought 
and the content. Aristotle, in reality, only attempted to collect 
the logical facts in reference to the formation of propositions, and 
the method of conclusions ; he has given in his logic only the 
natural history of finite thinking. However highly now we may 
rate the correctness of his abstraction, and the clearness with 
which he brings into consciousness the logical operation of the 
understanding, we must make equally conspicuous with this the 
want of all scientific derivation and foundation. The ten catego- 
ries which he, as already remarked, has discussed in a separate 
treatise, he simply mentions, without furnishing any ground or 
principle for this enumeration; that there are this number of 
categories is only a matter of fact to him, and he even cites them 
difi'erently in dificrent writings. In the same way also he takes 
up the figures of the conclusion empirically ; he considers them 
only as forms and determinations of relation of the formal think- 
ing, and continues thus, although he allows the conclusion to stand 
for the only form of science within the province of the logic of the 
understanding. Neither in his Metaphysics nor in his Physics 
does he cite the rules of the formal methods of conclusion which 
he develops in the Organon, clearly proving that he has nowhere 
in his system properly elaborated either his categories or his 
analytic ; his logical investigations do not influence generally the 
development of his philosophical thought, but have for the most 
part only the value of a preliminary scrutiny. 

3. Metaphysics. — Among all the Aristotelian writings, the 
Metaphysics is least entitled to be called a connected whole ; it is 
only a connection of sketches, which, though they follow a certain 
fundamental idea, utterly fail of an inner mediation and a per- 
fect development. We may distinguish in it seven distinct 
groups. (1) Criticism of the previous philosophic systems viewed in 
the light of the four Aristotelian principles, BooTc I. (2) Posit- 
ing of the aperies or the philosophical preliminary questions, 



116 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

III. (3) The principle of contradiction, IV. (4) Definitions, 
V. (5) Examination of the conception of essence (ovo-ta) and 
conceivable being (the tl rjv ehat) or the conception of matter 
{vX,r))j form (elSos), and that which arises from the connection 
of these two {avvoXov), VII. VIII. (6) Potentiality and ac- 
tuality, IX. (7) The Divine Spirit moving all, but itself un- 
moved, XII. (8) To these we may add the polemic against the 
Platonic doctrine of ideas and numbers, which runs through the 
whole Metaphysics, but is especially carried out in Books XIII. 
and XIV. 

(1) The Aristotelian Criticism of the Platonic Doctrine of 
Ideas. — In Aristotle's antagonism to the Platonic doctrine of 
ideas, we must seek for the specific difference between the two 
systems, a difference of which Aristotle avails himself of every 
opportunity (especially 3Ietaph. I. and XIII.) to express. Plato 
had beheld every thing actual in the idea, but the idea was to him 
a rigid truth, which had not yet become interwoven with the life 
and the movement of existence. Such a view, however, had this 
difficulty, the idea, however litJe Plato would have it so, found 
standing over against it in independent being the phenomenal 
world, while it furnished no principle on which the being of the 
phenomenal world could be affirmed. This Aristotle recognizes 
and charges upon Plato, that his ideas were only ^' imm.ortalized 
things of sense," out of which the being and becoming of the 
sensible could not be explained. In order to avoid this conse- 
quence, he himself makes out an original reference of mind to 
phenomenon, affirming that the relation of the two is, that of the 
actual to the possible, or that of form to matter, and considering 
also mind as the absolute actuality of matter, and matter, as the 
potentially mind. His argument against the Platonic doctrine 
of ideas, Aristotle makes out in the following way. 

Passing by now the fact that Plato has furnished no satisfac- 
tory proof for the objective and independent reality of ideas, and 
that his theory is without vindication, we may affirm in the first 
place that it is wholly unfruitful, since it possesses no ground of 
explanation for being. The ideas have no proper and independent 



I! 
* 



ARISTOTLE. 117 

content. To see this we need only refer to the manner in which 
Plato introduced them. In order to make science possible he had 
posited certain substances independent of the sensible, and unin- 
fluenced by its changes. But to serve such a purpose, there was 
offered to him nothing other than this individual thing of sense. 
Hence he gave to this individual a universal form, which was 
with him the idea. From this it resulted, that his ideas can 
hardly be separated from the sensible and individual objects which 
participate in them. The ideal duality and the empirical duality 
is one and the same content. The truth of this we can readily 
see, whenever we gain from the adherents to the doctrine of ideas 
a definite statement respecting the peculiar character of their un- 
changeable substances, in comparison with the sensible and indi- 
vidual things which participate in them. The only difference 
between the two consists in appending ^er se to the names ex- 
pressing the respective ideas ; thus, while the individual things are 
e, g. man, horse, etc., the ideas are man per se, horse per se, etc. 
There is only this formal change for the doctrine of ideas to rest 
upon; the finite content is not removed, but is only character- 
ized as perpetual. This objection, that in the doctrine of ideas 
we have in reality only the sensible posited as a not-sensible, and 
endowed with the predicate of immutability, Aristotle urges as above 
remarked when he calls the ideas " immortalized things of sense," 
not as though they were actually something sensible and spacial, 
but because in them the sensible individual loses at once its indi- 
viduality, and becomes a universal. He compares them in this 
respect with the gods of the popular and anthropomorphical reli- 
gion ; as these are nothing but deified men, so the ideas are only 
things of nature endowed with a supernatural potency, a sensible 
exalted to a not-sensible. This identity between the ideas and 
their respective individual things amounts moreover to this, that 
the introduction of ideas doubles the objects to be known in a 
burdensome manner, and without any good results- Why set up 
the same thing over again ? Why besides the sensible twofold - 
ness and threefoldness, affirm a twofoldness and threefoldness in 
the idea ? The adherents of the doctrine of ideas, when they 



118 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

posit an idea for every class of natural things, and through this 
theory set up two equivalent theories of sensible and not-sensible 
substances, seem therefore to Aristotle like men who think they 
can reckon better with many numbers than with few, and who 
therefore go to multiplying their numbers before they begin their 
reckoning. Therefore again the doctrine of ideas is a tautology, 
and wholly unfruitful of the explanation of being. ^' The ideas 
give no aid to the knowledge of the individual things participa- 
ting in them, since the ideas are not immanent in these things, 
but separate from them." Equally unfruitful are the ideas when 
considered in reference to the arising and departing of the things 
of sense. They contain no principle of becoming, of movement. 
There is in them no causality which might bring out the event, or 
explain the event when it had actually happened. Themselves 
without motion and process, if they had any effect, it could only 
be that of perfect repose. True, Plato affirms in his Phaedon 
that the ideas are causes both of being and becoming, but in spite 
of the ideas, nothing ever hecomes without a moving ; the ideas, 
by their separation from the becoming, have no such capacity to 
move. This indifferent relation of ideas to the actual becoming, 
Aristotle brings under the categories, potentiality and actuality, 
and farther says that the ideas are only potential, they are only 
bare possibility and essentiality because they are wanting in ac- 
tuality. — The inner contradiction of the doctrine of ideas is in 
brief this, viz., that it posits an individual immediately as a uni- 
versal, and at the same time pronounces the universal, the species, 
as numerically an individual, and also that the ideas are set up on 
the one side as separate individual substances, and on the other 
side as participant, and therefore as universal. Although the ideas 
as the original conceptions of species are a universal, which ariseM 
when being is fixed in existence, and the one brought out in the 
many, and the abiding is given a place in the changeable, yet can 
they not be defined as they should be according to the Platonic 
notion, that they are individual substances, for there can be neither 
definition nor derivation of an absolute individual, since even the 
word (and only in words is a definition possible) is in its nature a, 



«i 






ARISTOTLE. 119 

universal, and belongs also to other objects, consequently, every 
predicate in which I attempt to determine an individual thing 
cannot belong exclusively to that thing. The adherents of the 
doctrine of ideas, are therefore not at all in a condition to give an 
idea a conceivable termination ; their ideas are indefinable. — In 
general, Plato has left the relation of the individual objects to 
ideas very obscure. He calls the ideas archetypes, and allows 
that the objects may participate in them ; yet are these only 
poetical metaphors. How shall we represent to ourselves this 
^' participation," this copying of the original archetype ? We 
seek in vain for more accurate explanations of this in Plato. It 
is impossible to conceive how and why matter participates in the 
ideas. In order to explain this, we must add to the ideas a still 
higher and wider principle, which contains the cause for this " par- 
ticipation" of objects, for without a moving principle we find no 
ground for ''participation." Alike above the idea {e. g. the idea 
of man), and the -phenomenon {e, g. the individual man), there 
must stand a third common to both, and in which the two were 
united, i. e. as Aristotle was in the habit of expressing this objec- 
tion, the doctrine of ideas leads to the adoption of a '' third man." 
The result of this Aristotelian criticism is the immanence of the 
universal in the individual. The method of Socrates in trying to 
find the universal as the essence of the individual, and to give de- 
finitions according to conception, was as correct (for no science is 
possible without the universal) as the theory of Plato in exalting 
these universal conceptions to an independent subsistence as real 
individual substances, was erroneous. Nothing universal, nothing 
which is a kind or a species, exists besides and separate from the 
individual ; a thing and its conception cannot be separated from 
each other. With these principles Aristotle hardly deviated from 
I Plato's fundamental idea that the universal is the only true being, 
and the essence of individual things ; it may rather be said that 
he has freed this idea from its original abstraction, and given it a 
more profound mediation with the phenomenal world. Notwith- 
standing his apparent contradiction to Plato, the fundamental 
position of Aristotle is the same as that of his master, viz., that 



120 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the essence of a thing (to tl iomv, to tl rjv cTi/at) is known and rep- 
resented in the conception ; Aristotle however recognizes the uni- 
versal, the conception to be as little separated from the determined 
phenomenon as form from matter, and essence or substance (ovaia) 
in its most proper sense is, according to him, only that which can- 
not be predicated of another, though of this other every remain- 
ing thing may be predicated ; it is that which is a this (rdSe rt), 
the individual thing and not a universal. 

(2.) The four Aristotelian principles or causes, and the \ 
relation of form and matter. — From the criticism of the ' 
Platonic doctrine of ideas arose directly the groundwork of 
the Aristotelian system, the determinations of matter {vXy), 
and form (etSos). Aristotle enumerates four metaphysical 
principles or causes : matter, form, moving cause, and end. In 
a house, for instance, the matter is the wood, the form is the 
conception of the house, the moving cause is the builder, 
and the end is the actual house. These four determinations 
of all being resolve themselves upon a closer scrutiny into 
the fundamental antithesis of matter and form. The concep- 
tion of the moving cause is involved with the two other ideal 
principles of form and of end. The moving cause is that which 
has secured the transition of the incomplete actuality or poten- 
tiality to the complete actuality, or induces the becoming of mat- 
ter to form. But in every movement of the incomplete to the 
complete, the latter antedates in conception this movement, and 
is its motive. The moving cause of matter is therefore form. 
So is man the moving and producing cause of man ; the form of 
the statue in the understanding of the artist is the cause of the 
movement by which the statue is produced ; health must be in the 
thought of the physician before it can become the moving cause 
of convalescence ; so in a certain degree is medicine, health, and 
the art of building the form of the house. But in the same way, 
the moving or first cause is also identical with the final cause or 
end, for the end is the motive for all becoming and movement. 
The moving cause of the house is the builder, but the moving 
cause of the builder is the end to be attained, i, e. the house. 






ARISTOTLE. 121 

From such examples as these it is seen that the determinations 
of form and end may be considered under one, in so far as both 
are united in the conception of actuality {ivipyeio), for the end 
of every thing is its completed being, its conception or its form, 
the bringing out into complete actuality that which was poten- 
tially contained in it. The end of the hand is its conception, the 
end of the seed is the tree, which is at the same time the essence 
of the seed. The only fundamental determinations, therefore, 
which cannot be wholly resolved into each other, are matter and 
form. 

Matter when abstracted from form in thought, Aristotle re- 
garded as that which was entirely without predicate, determina- 
tion and distinction. It is that abiding thing which lies at the 
basis of all becoming ; but which in its own being is different 
from every thing which has become. It is capable of the widest 
diversity of forms, but is itself without determinate form ; it is 
every thing in possibility, but nothing in actuality. There is a 
first matter which lies at the basis of every determinate thing, 
precisely as the wood is related to the bench and the marble to 
the statue. With this conception of matter Aristotle prides him- 
self upon having conquered the difficulty so frequently urged of 
explaining the possibility that any thing can become, since being 
can neither come out of being nor out of not-being. For it is 
not out of not-being absolutely, but only out of that which as to 
actuality is not-being, but which potentially is being, that any 
thing becomes. Possible or potential being is no more not-being 
than actuality. Every existing object of nature is hence but a 
potential thing which has become actualized. Matter is thus a 
far more positive substratum with Aristotle than with Plato, who 
had treated it as absolutely not-being. From this is clearly seen 
how Aristotle could apprehend matter in opposition to form as 
something positively negative and antithetic to the form, and as 
its positive denial (o-rep^^crt?). 

As matter coalesces with potentiality, so does form coincide 
with actuality. It is that which makes a distinguishable and 
actual object, a this (roSe n) out of the undistinguished and in- 
6 



122 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



determinate matter ; it is the peculiar virtue, the completed ac- 
tivity, the soul of every thing. That which Aristotle calls form, 
therefore, is not to be confounded with what we perhaps may call 
shape ; a hand severed from the arm, for instance, has still the 
outward shape of a hand, hut according to the Aristotelian appre- 
hension, it is only a hand now as to matter and not as to form : an 
actual hand, a hand as to form, is only that which can do the 
proper work of a hand. Pure form is that which, in truth, is 
without matter {to tl rjv dvac) ; or, in other words, the conception 
of being, the pure conception. But such pure form does not 
exist in the realm of determined being ; every determined being, 
every individual substance (o^o-ta), every thing which is a this, is 
rather a totality of matter and form, a (crvvoXov), It is, there- 
fore, owing to matter, that being is not pure form and pure con- 
ception ; matter is the ground of the becoming, the manifold, and 
the accidental ; and it is this, also, which gives to science its 
limits. For in precisely the measure in which the individual 
thing bears in itself a material element is it uncognizable. From 
what has been said, it follows that the opposition between matter 
and form is a variable one, that being matter in one respect 
which in another is form ; building-wood, e, g. is matter in rela- 
tion to the completed house, but in relation to the unhewn tree it 
is form ; the soul in respect to the body is form, but in respect to 
the reason, which is the form of form (elSos eT8oi;s) is it matter. 
On this stand-point the totality of all existence may be repre- 
sented as a ladder, whose lowest step is a prime matter {Trpdjrrj 
vX.yj)j which is not at all form, and whose highest step is an ultimate 
form which is not at all matter, but is pure form (the absolute, 
divine spirit). That which stands between these two points is in 
one respect matter, and in another respect form, i. e. the former 
is ever translating itself into the latter. This position, which 
lies at the basis of the Aristotelian viev/ of nature, is attained 
analytically through the observation that all nature exhibits the 
perpetual and progressive transition of matter into form, and 
shows tlie exhaustless and original ground of things as it comes 
to view in ever ascending ideal formations. That all matter 



ARISTOTLE. 128 

should become form, and all that is potential should be actual, 
and all that is should be known, is doubtless the demand of the 
reason and the end of all becoming ; yet is this actually imprac- 
ticable, since Aristotle expressly affirms that matter as the anti- 
thesis, or denial of form, can never become wholly actualized, and 
therefore can never be perfectly known. The Aristotelian sys- 
tem ends thus like its predecessors, in the unsubdued dualism of 
matter and form. 

(3.) PotentialUy and Actuality (Swa/xt? and evepyeta). — The 
relation of matter to form, logically apprehended, is but the 
relation of potentiality to actuality. These terms, which Aris- 
totle first employed according to their philosophical signifi- 
cance, are very characteristic for his system. We have in the 
movement of potential being to actual being the explicit concep- 
J.ion of becoming, and in the four principles we have a distribu- 
tion of this conception in its parts. The Aristotelian system is 
consequently a system of the becoming, in which the Heraclitic 
principle appears again in a richer and profounder apprehension, 
as that of the Eleatics had done with Plato. Aristotle in this 
has made no insignificant step towards the subjection of the Pla- 
tonic dualism. If matter is the possibility of form, or reason 
becomicg, then is the opposition between the idea and the phe- 
nomenal world potentially overcome, at least in principle, since 
there is one being which appears both in matter and form only 
in difierent stages of development. The relation of the potential 
to the actual Aristotle exhibits by the relation of the unfinished 
to the finished work, of the unemployed carpenter to the one at 
work upon his building, of the individual asleep to him awake. 
Potentially the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown up tree is 
it actually ; the potential philosopher is he who is not at this 
moment in a philosophizing condition ; even before the battle the 
better general is the potential conqueror ; potentially is space in- 
finitely divisible ; in fact every thing is potentially which possesses 
a principle of motion, of development, or of change, and which, if 
unhindered by any thing external, will be of itself Actuality or 
entelechy on the other hand indicates the perfect act, the end as 



124 A HISTOKY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

gained, the completely actual (the grown-up tree e, g, is the en- 
telechy of the seed-corn), that activity in which the act and the 
completeness of the act fall together, e, g. to see, to think where 
he sees and he has seen, he thinks and he has thought (the acting 
and the completeness of the act) are one and the same, while in 
those activities which involve a becoming, e. g. to learn, to go, to 
become well, the two are separated. In this apprehension of form 
(or idea) as actuality or entelechy, t. e. in joining it with the 
movement of the becoming, is found the chief antagonism of the 
Aristotelian and Platonic systems. Plato considers the idea as 
being at rest, and consisting for itself, in opposition to the becom- 
ing and to motion; but with Aristotle the idea is the eternal 
product of the becoming, it is an eternal energy, i. e, an activity 
in complete actuality, it is not perfect being, but is being produced 
in every moment and eternally, through the movement of the 
potential to its actual end. 

(4.) The Absolute^ Divine Spirit. — Aristotle has sought to 
establish from a number of sides, the conception of the absolute 
spirit, or as he calls it, the first mover, and especially by joining it 
to the relation of potentiality and actuality. 

(a.) The Gosmological Form. — The actual is ever an\ecedent 
to the potential not only in conception (for I can speak of poten- 
tiality only in reference to some activity) but also in time, for the 
acting becomes actual only through an acting ; the uneducated 
becomes educated through the educated, and this leads to the 
claim of a first mover which shall be pure activity. Or, again, 
it is only possible that there should be motion, becoming, or a 
chain of causes, except as a principle of motion, a mover exists. 
But this principle of motion must be one whose essence is actual- 
ity, since that which only exists in possibility cannot alone become 
actual, and therefore cannot be a principle of motion. All becom- 
ing postulates with itself that which is eternal and which has not 
become, that which itself unmoved is a principle of motion, a first 
mover. 

(5.) The Ontological Form. — In the same way it follows from 
the conception of potentiality, that the eternal and necessary 



ARISTOTLE. ' 125 

being cannot be potential. For that wbicb potentially is, may- 
just as well either be or not be ; bnt that which possibly is not, 
is temporal and not eternal. Nothing therefore which is abso- 
lutely permanent, is potential, but only actual. Or, again, if 
potentiality be the first, then can there be no possible existence, 
but this contradicts the conception of the absolute or that which 
it is impossible should not be. 

(c.) The Moral Form. — Potentiality always involves a 
possibility to the most opposite. He who has the capacity to 
be well, has also the capacity to be sick, but actually no man 
is at the same time both sick and well. Therefore actuality 
is better than potentiality, and only it can belong to the eter- 
nal. 

(d,) So far as the relation of potentiality and actuality is 
identical with the relation of matter and form, we may apprehend 
in the following way these arguments fOr the existence of a being 
which is pure actuality. The supposition of an absolute matter 
without form (the Trpi^rrj vXt]) involves also the supposition of an 
absolute form without matter (a TrpujTov elSos), And since the 
conception of form resolves itself into the three determinations, 
of the moving, the conceivable, and the final cause, so is the eter- 
nal one the absolute principle of motion (the first mover irpcoTov 
Xtvow), the absolute conception or pure intelligible (the pure tl yv 
etvat), and the absolute end. 

All the other predicates of the first mover or the highest prin- 
ciple of the world, follow from these premises with logical necessity. 
Unity belongs to him, since the ground of the manifoldness of 
being lies in the matter and he has no participation in matter ; 
he is immovable and abiding ever the same, since otherwise he 
could not be the absolute mover and the cause of all becoming; 
he is life as active self-end and actuality ; he is at the same time 
intelligible and intelligence, because he is absolutely immaterial 
and free from nature; he is active, L e, thinking intelligence, 
because his essence is pure actuality ; he is self-contemplating in- 
telligence, because the divine thought cannot attain its actuality 
in any thing extrinsic, and because if it were the thought of any 



126 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thing other than itself, this would make it depend upon some 
potential existence for its actualization. Hence the famed Aris- 
totelian definition of the absolute that it is the thought of thought 
(yorjcTis voi](T€ws), the personal unity of the thinking and the 
thought, of the knowing and the known, the absolute subject- 
object. In the Metaphysics (XII. 1.) we have a statement in 
order of these attributes of the Divine Spirit, and an almost 
devout sketch of the eternally blessed Deity, knowing himself in 
his eternal tranquillity as the absolute truth, satisfied with himself, 
and wanting neither in activity nor in any virme. 

As would appear from this statement, Aristotle has never fully 
developed the idea of his absolute spirit, and still less has he har- 
monized it with the fundamental principles and demands of his 
philosophy, although many consequences of his system would 
seem to drive him to this, and numerous principles which he has 
laid down would seem to prepare the way for it. This idea is 
unexpectedly introduced in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics 
simply as an assertion, without being farther and inductively 
substantiated. It is at once attended with important difficulties. 
We do not see why the ultimate ground of motion or the absolute 
spirit must be conceived as a personal being ; we do not see how 
any thing can be a moving cause and yet itself unmoved ; how it 
can be the origin of all becoming, that is of the departing and 
arising, and itself remain a changeless energy, a principle of motion 
with no potentiality to be moved, for the moving thing must stand 
in a relation of passive and active with the thing moved. More- 
over, Aristotle, as would follow from these contradictory deter- 
minations, has never thoroughly and consistently determined the 
relation between God and the world. He has considered the ab- 
solute spirit only as contemplative and theoretical reason, frora 
whom all action must be excluded because he is perfect end in 
himself, but every action presupposes an end not yet perfected ; 
we have thus no true motive for his activity in reference to the 
world. He cannot be truly called the first mover in his theoretical 
relation alone, and since he is in his essence extra-mundane and 
unmoved, he cannot once permeate the life of the world with his 



ARISTOTLE, 127 

activity ; and since also matter on one side never rises wholly to 
form, we have, therefore, here again the unreconciled dualism 
between the Divine spirit and the unmistakable reality of matter. 
Many of the arguments which Aristotle brings against the gods of 
Anaxagoras may be urged against his own theory. 

IV. The Aristotelian Physics. — The Aristotelian Physics, 
which embraces the greater portion of his writing's, follows 
the becoming and the building up of matter into form, the 
course through which nature as a living being progresses in 
order to become individual soul. All becoming has an end ; 
but end is form, and the absolute form is spirit. With per- 
fect consistency, therefore, Aristotle regards the human indi- 
vidual of the male sex as the end and the centre of earthly 
nature in its realized form. All else beneath the moon is, as it 
were, an unsuccessful attempt of nature to produce the male hu- 
man, a superfluity which arises from the impotence of nature to 
subdue the whole of matter and bring it into form. Every thing 
which does not gain the universal end of nature must be regarded 
as incomplete, and is properly an exception or abortion. For in- 
stance, he calls it an abortion when a child does not resemble its 
father ; and the female child he looks upon as an abortion in a 
less degree, which he accounts for by the insufficient energy of 
the male as the forming principle. In general, Aristotle regards 
the female as imperfect in comparison with the male, an imper- 
fection which belongs in a higher degree to all animals except 
man. If nature did her work with perfect consciousness, then 
were all these mistakes, these incomplete and improper forma- 
tions inexplicable, but she is an artist working only after an un- 
conscious impulse, and does not complete her work with a clear 
and rational insight. 

1. The universal conditions of all natural existence, motion^ 
matter, space and time, Aristotle investigates in the books of 
Physics. These physical conceptions may, moreover, be reduced 
to the metaphysical notions of potentiality and actuality ; motion 
is accordingly defined as the activity of being potentially, and is 
therefore a mean between the merely potential entity and the 



128 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

perfectly realized activity; — space is the possibility of motion, 
and possesses, therefore, potentially, though not actively, the pro- 
perty of infinite divisibility ; time is in the same way the in- 
finitely divisible, expressing the measure of motion in number, 
and is the number of motion according to before and after. All 
three are infinite, but the infinite which is represented in them is 
only potentially but not actually a whole : it comprehends nothing, 
but is itself comprehended, — a fact mistaken by those who are 
accustomed to extol the infinite as though it comprehended and 
held every thing in itself, because it had some similarity with the 
whole. 

2. Prom his conception of motion Aristotle derives his view 
of the collective universe^ as brought out in his books De Ccdo. 
The most perfect motion is the circular, because this is constant, 
uniform, and ever returning into itself. The world as a whole is 
therefore conditioned by the circular motion, and being a whole 
complete in itself, it has a spherical form. But because the mo- 
tion which returns into itself is better than every other, it fol- 
lows, from the same ground, that in this spherical universe the 
better sphere will be in the circumference where the circular 
motion is most perfect, and the inferior one will arrange itself 
around the centre of the universal sphere. The former is heaven, 
the latter is earth, and between the two stand the planetary 
spheres. Heaven, as the place of circular motion, and the scene 
of unchangeable order, stands nearest the first moving cause, and 
is under its immediate influence ; it is the place where the an- 
cients, guided by the correct tradition of a lost wisdom, have 
placed the Divine abode. Its parts, the fixed stars, are passion- 
less and eternal essences, which have attained the best end, which 
must be eternally conceived in a tireless activity, and which, 
though not clearly cognizable, are yet much more divine than 
man. A lower sphere, next to that of the fixed stars, is the 
sphere of the planets, among which, besides the five known to the 
ancients, he reckons the sun and the moon. This sphere stands 
a little removed from the greatest perfection : instead of moving 
directly from right to left, as do the fixed stars, the planets move 



ARISTOTLE. 129 

in contrary directions and in oblique orbits ; they serve the fixed 
starSj and are ruled by their motion. Lastly, the earth is in the 
centre of the universe, farthest removed from the first mover, and 
hence partaking in the smallest degree of the Divine. There are 
thus three kinds of being, exhibiting three stages of perfection, and 
necessary for the explanation of nature ; first, the absolute spirit 
or God, an immaterial being, who, himself unmoved, produces 
motion ; second, the super-terrestrial region of the heavens, a 
being which is moved and which moves, and which, though not 
without matter, is eternal and unchangeable, and possesses ever a 
circular motion ; and, lastly, in the lowest course this earth, a 
changeful being, which has only to play the passive part of being 
moved. 

3. Nature in a strict sense, the scene of elemental working, 
represents to us a constant and progressive transition of the ele- 
mentary to the vegetative, and of the vegetative to the animal 
world. The lowest step is occupied by the inanimate bodies of 
nature, which are simple products of the elements mingling them- 
selves together, and have their entelechy only in the determinate 
combinations of these elements, but whose energy consists only 
in striving after a fitting place in the universe, and in resting 
there so far as they reach it unhindered. But now such a mere 
external entelechy is not possessed by the living bodies ; within 
them dwells a motion as organizing principle by which they attain 
to actuality, and which as a preserving activity develops in them 
towards a perfected organization, — in a word they have a soul, for 
a soul is the entelechy of an organic body. In plants we find the 
soul working only as persevering and nourishing energy : the 
plant has no other function than to nourish itself and to propagate 
its kind ; among animals — where we find a progress according to 
the mode of their reproduction — the soul appears as sensitive ; 
animals have sense, and are capable of locomotion ; lastly, the 
human soul is at the same time nutritive, sensitive, and cog- 
nitive. 

4. Man, as the end of all nature, embraces in himself the 

diff'erent steps of development in which the life of nature is ex- 
6# 



130 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hibited. The division of the faculties of the soul must therefore 
be necessarily regulated, according to the division of living crea- 
tures. As the nutritive faculty is alone the property of vegeta- 
bles, and sensation, of animals, while to the more perfect animals 
locomotion also belongs, so are these three activities also devel- 
opment steps of the human soul, the antecedent being the neces- 
sary condition of, and presupposed in time by, the subsequent, 
while the soul itself is nothing other than the union of these dif- 
ferent activities of an organic body in one common end, as the 
entelechy of the organic body. The fourth step, thought or rea- 
son, which, added to the three others, constitutes the peculiarity 
of the human soul, forms alone an exception from the general 
law. It is not a simple product of the lower faculties of the soul, 
it does not stand related to them simply as a higher stage of de- 
velopment, nor simply as the soul to the body, as the end to the 
instrument, as actuality to possibility, as form to matter. But as 
pure intellectual activity, it completes itself without any media- 
tion of a bodily organ ; as the reason comes into the body from 
without, so is it separable from the body, and therefore has it no 
inner connection with the bodily functions, but is something 
wholly foreign in nature. True, there exists a connection be- 
tween thought and sensation, for while the sensations are out- 
wardly divided, according to the different objects of sense, yet 
internally they meet in one centre, as a common sense. Here 
they become changed into images and representations^ which 
again become transmuted into thoughts, and so it might seem as 
if thought were only the result of the sensation, as if intelligence 
were passively determined; (here we might notice the proposition 
falsely ascribed to Aristotle : nihil est in intelleciu quod non 
fuerit in sensu, and also the well-known though often misunder- 
stood comparison of the soul with an unwritten tablet, which 
only implies this much, viz., that as the unwritten tablet is po- 
tentially but not actually a book, so does knowledge belong po- 
tentially though not actually to the human reason ; fundamentally 
and radically the thought may have in itself universal concep- 
tions, so far as it has the capacity to form them, but not actually? 



ARISTOTLE. 131 

nor in a determined or developed form). But this passivity pre- 
supposes rather an activity ; for if the thought in its actuality, in 
that it appears as knowledge, hecomes all forms and therefore all 
things, then must the thought constitute itself that which it be- 
comes, and therefore all passively determined human intelligence 
rests on an originally active intelligence, which exists as self- 
actualizing possibility and pure actuality, and which, as such, is 
wholly independent of the human body, and has not its entelechy 
in it but in itself, and is not therefore participant in the death of 
the body, but lives on as universal reason, eternal and immortal. 
The Aristotelian dualism here again appears. Manifestly this 
active intelligence stands related to the soul as God to nature. 
The two sides possess no essential relation to each other. As the 
Divine spirit could not enter the life of the world, so is the human 
spirit unable to permeate the life of sense ; although it is deter- 
mined as something passionless and immaterial, still must it as 
soul be connected with matter, and although it is pure and self- 
contemplative form, still it should be distinguished from the Divine 
spirit which is its counterpart; the want of a satisfactory media- 
tion on the side of the human and on that of the Divine, is in 
these respects unmistakable. 

V. The Aristotelian Ethics. 1. Relation of Ethics to 
Physics. — Aristotle, guided by his tendency towards the natural, 
has more closely connected ethics and physics than either of his 
predecessors, Socrates or Plato, had done. While Plato found 
it impossible to speak of the good in man's moral condition, dis- 
connected from the idea of the good in itself, Aristotle's princi- 
pal object is to determine what is good for man solely; and he 
supposes that the good in itself, the idea of the good, in no way 
facilitates the knowledge of that good, which alone is attainable 
in practical life. It is only the latter, the moral element in the 
life of men, and not the good in the great affairs of the universe, 
with which ethics has to do. Aristotle therefore considers the 
good especially in its relation to the natural condition of men, 
and affirms that it is the end towards which nature herself tends. 
Instead of viewing the moral element as something purely intel- 



132 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

lectual, he rather apprehends it as only the bloom of the physi- 
cal, which here becomes spiritualized and ethical ; instead of 
making virtue to be knowledge, he treats it as the normal perfec- 
tion of the natural instinct. That man is hy nature a political 
animal, is his fundamental proposition for the doctrine of the 
state. 

From this connection of the ethical and the physical, arose the 
objections which Aristotle urged against the Socratic conception 
of virtue. Socrates had looked to the dialectical exclusively for 
the ground of all morality, and had accordingly made virtue and 
knowledge one. But in this, said Aristotle, the pathological ele- 
ment which is associated by nature with every moral act, is 
destroyed. It is not reason, but the circumstances and natural 
bias of the soul which are the first ground of virtue. There is an 
instinct in the soul which at first strives unconsciously after the 
good, which is only subsequently sought with the full moral in- 
sight. Moral virtue arises first from that which is natural. It 
is on this ground, also, that Aristotle combats the notion that 
virtue may be learned. It is not through the perfection of 
knowledge, but by exercise that we become acquainted with the 
good. It is by a practice of moral acts that we become virtuous, 
just as by a practice of building and of music we become archi- 
tects and musicians ; for the habit which is the ground of moral 
constancy, is only a fruit of the abundant repetition of a moral 
action. Hence it is that originally we have our virtuous or our 
vicious dispositions in our power, but as soon as they are formed 
either to virtue or to vice, we are no longer able to control them. 
It is by three things, therefore, nature, habit, and reason, that man 
becomes good. The stand-point of Aristotle is in these respects 
directly opposed to that of Socrates. While Socrates regarded 
the moral and the natural as two opposites, and made the moral 
conduct to be the consequent of a rational enlightenment, Aris- 
totle treated both as diff'erent steps of development, and reversing 
the order of Socrates, made the rational enlightenment in moral 
things consequent upon the moral conduct. 

2. The Highest Good. — Every action has an end ; but since 



ARISTOTLE. 133 

every end is only itself a means to some other, we need therefore 
something after which we can strive for its own sake, and which 
is a good absolutely, or a best. What now is this highest good 
and supreme object of human pursuit ? In name, at least, all men 
are agreed upon it, and call it happiness, but what happiness is, is 
a much disputed point. If asked in what human happiness con- 
sists, the first characteristic given would be that it belongs alone 
to the peculiar being of man. But sensation is not peculiar to 
man, for he shares this with the brute. A sensation of pleasure, 
therefore, which arises when some desire is gratified, may be the 
happiness of .the brute, but certainly does not constitute the essen- 
tial of human happiness. Human happiness must express the 
completeness of intelligent existence, and because intelligence is 
essentially activity, therefore the happiness of man cannot consist 
in any merely passive condition, but must express a completeness 
of human action. Happiness therefore is a well-being, which is 
at the same time a well-doing, and it is a well-doing which satis- 
fies all the conditions of nature, and which finds the highest con- 
tentment or well-being in an unrestrained energy. Activity and 
pleasure are thus inseparably bound together by a natural bond, 
and happiness is the result of their union when they are sustained 
through a perfect life. Hence the Aristotelian definition of hap- 
piness. It is a perfect practical activity in a perfect life. 

Although it might seem from this as though Aristotle placed 
the happiness of man in the natural activity of the soul, and 
regarded this as self-sufficient, still he is not blind to the fact 
that perfect happiness is dependent on other kinds of good whose 
possession is not absolutely within our power. It is true he 
expresses an opinion that outward things in moderation are 
sufficient, and that only great success or signal reverses materially 
influence the happiness of life ; still he holds that wealth, the 
possession of friends and children, noble birth, beauty of body, 
etc., are more or less necessary conditions of happiness, though 
these are partly dependent on accidental circumstances. These 
wavering and inconsistent views of Aristotle respecting the nature 
of happiness, naturally rise from his empirical method of investi- 



134 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

gation. Careful in noting every thing whicli our limited experience 
seems to utter, he expressly avoids making either virtue or plea- 
sure his principle, because actual experience shows the separation 
of the two. Although therefore he gives directions in general to 
strive after that pleasure in which the good man delights, or 
which is connected with a virtuous activity, yet is pleasure with 
him an end for its own sake, and not merely an accident of virtue • 
an empiricist, Aristotle is here also a dualist, while the Stoics and 
Epicureans have respectively taken and held fast to each of the 
two sides. 

3. Conception of Virtue. — As has already been seen in the 
Aristotelian Polemic against Socrates, virtue is the product of 
an oft-repeated moral action, a condition acquired through prac- 
tice, a moral dexterity of the soul. The nature of this dexterity 
is seen in the following way : every action completes something 
as its work ; but now if a work is imperfect when it has either a 
want or a superfluity, so also is every action imperfect in so far 
as there is in it either too little or too much ; its perfection, 
therefore, is only found as it contains the right degree, the true 
mean between the too much and too little. Accordingly, virtue 
in general may be explained as the observation of the right mean 
in action, by which is meant not the arithmetical or absolute 
mean, but the one relative to ourselves. For what is enough for 
one individual is insufficient for another. The virtue of a man, 
of a woman, of a child, and of a slave is respectively different. 
Thus, virtue depends upon time, circumstance, and relation. The 
determination of this correct mean will always waver. In the 
impossibility of an active and exhaustive formula, we can only 
say respecting it that it is the correct mean as determined by a 
correct practical insight which is seen to be such by the intelli- 
gent man. 

It follows from this general conception of virtue, that there 
will be as many separate virtues as there are circumstances of 
life, and as men are ever entering into new relations, in which it 
becomes difficult practically to determine the correct method of 
action, Aristotle, in opposition to Plato, would limit the field of 



ARISTOTLE. 135 

separate virtues by no definite number. Only certain fundamental 
virtues can be named according as there are certain fixed and 
fundamental relations among men. For instance, man has a fixed 
relation to pleasure and pain. In relation to pain, the true moral 
mean is found in neither fearing nor courting it. and this is valor. 
In relation to pleasure, the true mean standing between greediness 
and indiflerence is temperance. In social life, the moral mean is 
between doing and suffering wrong, which is justice. In a similar 
way many other virtues might be characterized, each one of them 
standing as a mean between two vices, the one of which expresses 
a want and the other a superfluity. A closer exhibition of the 
Aristotelian doctrine of virtue would have much psychological 
and linguistic interest, though but little philosophical worth. 
Aristotle takes the conception of his vii'tues more from the use 
of language than from a thoroughly applied principle of classifi- 
cation. His classification of virtues is, therefore, without any 
stable ground, and is difterently given in different places. The 
conception of the correct mean which x\ristotle makes the mea- 
sure of a moral act is obviously unworthy of a systematic repre- 
sentation, for as it cannot be determined how the intelligent man 
would act in every case, there could never be given any specific 
directions how others should act. In fine, the criterion of virtue 
as the correct mean between two vices cannot be always applied 
for in the virtue of wisdom, e. g, which Aristotle describes as the 
mean between simplicity and cunning, there is no such thing as 
too much. 

4. The State. — Aristotle, like Plato, makes the highest con- 
dition of moral virtue attainable only through political life. The 
state exists before the individual, as the whole is prior to its parts. 
The rationality and morality of the state is thus antecedent to 
that of the individual. Hence in the best state, moral and 
political virtue, the virtue of the man and the virtue of the citi- 
zen are one and the same thing, although in states as they are, the 
good citizen is not necessarily also the good man. But though 
this principle harmonized with Plato, yet Aristotle, at whose time 
the old aboriginal states had already begun their process of dis- 



136 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

solution, cherished a very different view concerning the relation 
of the individual and the family, to the state. He allows to both 
these an incomparably greater consideration, and yields to them a 
far wider field of independent action. Hence he combats Plato's 
community of wives and goods, not simply on the ground of its 
practicability, but also on the ground of its principle, since the 
state cannot be conceived as a strict unit, or as possessing any 
such centralization as would weaken or destroy individual activity. 
With Plato the state is but the product of the philosophical 
reflection, while with Aristotle it results from given circumstances, 
from history and experience, and he therefore wholly omits to 
sketch a model state or a normal constitution, but carefully con- 
fines his attention to those which actually exist. Although the 
ideal of a state constitution in the form of a limited monarchy is 
unmistakably in his mind, still he contents himself with portray- 
ing the different kinds of polities in their peculiarities, their origin, 
and their reciprocal transitions. He does not undertake to declare 
which is the best state absolutely, since this depends upon circum- 
stances, and one constitution is not adapted for every state. He 
simply attempts to show what form of the state is relatively the 
best and the most advisable under certain historical circumstances, 
and under given natural, climatic, geographic, economic, and in- 
tellectual conditions. In this he is faithful to the character of 
his whole philosophy. Standing on the basis of the empirical, he 
advances here as elsewhere, critically and reflectively, and in de- 
spair of attaining the absolutely true and good, he seeks for these 
relatively, with his eye fixed only on the probable and the prac- 
ticable. 

VI. — The Peripatetic School. — The school of Aristotle, 
called the Peripatetic, can here only be mentioned ; the want of 
independence in its philosophizing, and the absence of any great 
and universal influence, rendering it unworthy an extended notice. 
Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Strato are its most famous leadera 
Like most philosophical schools, it confines itself chiefly to a more 
thorough elaboration and explanation of the system of its master. 
In some empirical provinces, especially the physical, the attempt 



ARISTOTLE. 137 

was made to carry out still further the system, while at the same 
time its speculative basis was set aside and neglected. 

VII. — Transition to the Post- Aristotelian Philosophy. — 
The productive energy of Grecian philosophy expends itself with 
Aristotle, contemporaneously and in connection with the universal 
decay of Grecian life and spirit. Instead of the great and uni- 
versal systems of a Plato and an Aristotle, we have now systems 
of a partial and one-sided character, corresponding to that uni- 
versal breach between the subject and the objective world which 
characterized the civil, religious, and social life of this last epoch 
of Greece, the time succeeding Alexander the Great. That sub- 
jectivity, which had been first propounded by the Sophists, was 
at length, after numerous struggles, victorious, though its triumph 
was gained upon the ruins of the Grecian civil and artistic life ; 
the individual has become emancipated, the subject is no longer 
to be given up to the objective world, the liberated subjectivity 
must now be perfected and satisfied. This process of develop- 
ment is seen in the post- Aristotelian philosophy, though it finds 
its conditioning cause in the character of the preceding philoso- 
phical strivings. The dualism which formed the chief want of 
the systems both of Plato and Aristotle, has forced itself upon 
our attention at every step. The attempt which had been made, 
with the greatest expenditure of which the Grecian mind was 
capable, to refer back to one ultimate ground both subject and 
object, mind and matter, had produced no satisfactory result ; and 
these two oppositions, around which all previous philosophy had 
struggled in vain, still remained disconnected. Wearied with 
the fruitless attempts at mediation, the subject now breaks with 
the objective world. Its attention is directed towards itself in 
its own self-consciousness. The result of this gives us either 
Stoicism, where the moral subject appears in the self-sufficiency 
of the sage to whom every external good and every objective 
work is indifi'erent, and who finds a good only in a moral activity ; 
or Epicureanism, where the subject delights itself in the inner 
feeling of pleasure and the calm repose of a satisfied heart, enjoy- 
ing the present and the past, and never fearing the future while 



138 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it sees in the objective world only a means by which it can utter 
itself; or, again, Scepticism, where the subject, doubting and 
rejecting all objective truth and science, appears in the apathy of 
the Sceptic, who has broken both theoretically and practically 
with the objective world. In fine, New-Platonism, the last of the 
ancient philosophical systems, bears this same character of sub- 
jectivity, for this whole system turns upon the exaltation of the 
subject to the absolute, and wherever it speculates respecting God 
and his relation to man, it is alone in order to establish the pro- 
gressive transition from the absolute object to the human person- 
ality. The ruling principle in it all is the interest of the subjec- 
tivity, and the fact that in this system there are numerous objective 
determinations, is only because the subject has become absolute. 



SECTION XVII. 

STOICISM. 

Zeno, of Oittium, a city of Cyprus, an elder contemporary of 
Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedon, is generally given as the 
founder of the Stoical school. Deprived of his property by 
shipwreck, he took refuge in philosophy, incited also by an inner 
bias to such pursuits. He at first became a disciple of the Cynic 
Crateas, then of Stilpo, one of the Megarians, and lastly he be- 
took himself to the Academy, where he heard the lessons of 
Xenocrates and Polemo. Hence the eclectic character of his 
teaching. It has in fact been charged against him, that difiering 
but little if at all from the earlier schools, he attempted to form 
a school of his own, with a system wherein he had changed noth- 
ing but names. He opened a school at Athens, in the " varie- 
gated porch," so called from the paintings of Polygnotus, with 
which it was adorned, whence his adherents received the name of 
^' philosophers of the porch" (Stoics). Zeno is said to have presi- 
ded over his school for fifty-eight years, and at a very advanced 



STOICISM. 139 

age to have put an end to his existence. He is praised for the 
temperance and the austerity of his habits, while his abstemious- 
ness is proverbial. The monument in his honor, erected after 
his death by the Athenians, at the instance of Antigonus, bore 
the high but simple eulogium that his life had been in unison 
with his philosophy. Cleanilies was the successor of Zeno in 
the Stoic school, and faithfully carried out the method of his 
master. Cleanthes was succeeded by Chrysippus, who died 
about 208 B. C. He has been regarded as the chief prop of this 
school, in which respect it was said of him, that without a Chry- 
sippus there would never have been a Porch. At all events, as 
Chrysippus was an object of the greatest veneration, and of al- 
most undisputed authority with the later Stoics, he ought to be 
considered as the principal founder of the school. He was a 
writer so voluminous, that his works have been said to amount to 
seven hundred and five, among which, however, were repeated 
treatises upon the same propositions, and citations without mea- 
sure from poets and historians, given to prove and illustrate his 
opinions. Not one of all his writings has come down to us. 
Chrysippus closes the series of the philosophers who founded the 
Porch. The later heads of the school, as Panceiius^ the friend 
of the younger Scipio (his famous work De Officiis, Cicero has 
elaborated in his treatise of the same name), and Fosidonius, 
may be classed with Cicero, Pompeius, and others, and were 
eclectic in their teachings. The Stoics have connected philoso- 
phy most intimately with the duties of practical life. Philoso- 
phy is with them the practice of wisdom, the exercise of virtue. 
Virtue and science are with them one, in so far at least that they 
divide virtue in reference to philosophy into physical, ethical, and 
logical. But though they go on according to this threefold di- 
vision, and treat of logic and physics, and though they even rank 
physics higher than either of the other sciences, regarding it as 
the mother of the ethical and the science of the Divine, yet do 
we find their characteristic stand-point most prominently in their 
theory of morals. 

1. Logic. — We have already said that it is the breach bo- 



140 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tween subject and object, which forms the basis of all post- Aris- 
totelian philosophy. The beginning of this philosophy of sub- 
jectivity is found with the Stoics. The feature most worthy of 
notice in their logic, is the striving after a subjective criterion of 
the truth, by which they might distinguish the true representa- 
tion from the false. Since they limited all scientific knowledge 
to the knowledge of the senses, they found this criterion in that 
which was evident in the sensuous impression. They conceived 
that they had answered the whole problem, in affirming that the 
true or conceivable representation reveals not only itself, but also 
its object : it, they said, is nothing else than a representation 
which is produced by a present object in a naanner like itself 

2. Physics. — In their physics, where they follow for the most 
part Heraclitus, the Stoics are distinguished from their prede- 
cessors, especially from Plato and Aristotle, by their thoroughly 
carried out proposition that nothing uncorporeal exists, that every 
thing essential is corporeal (just as in their logic they had sought 
to derive all knowledge from the sensuous perception). This 
sensualism or materialism of the Stoics which, as we have seen in 
their logic, lies at the basis of their theory of knowledge, might 
seem foreign to all their moral and idealistic tendencies, but is 
clearly explained from their subjective stand-point, for, when the 
thought has become so intensely engrossed in the subject, the ob- 
jective world can only be regarded as a corporeal and material 
existence. The most immediate consequence of such a view is 
their pantheism. Aristotle before them had separated the Divine 
Being from the world, as the pure and eternal form from the 
eternal matter ; but so far as this separation implied a distinction 
which was not simply logical, but actual and real, the Stoics would 
not admit it. It seemed to them impossible to dissever God from 
matter, and they therefore considered God and the world as power 
and its manifestation, and thus as one. Matter is the passive 
ground of things, the original substratum for the divine activity : 
God is the active and formative energy of matter dwelling within 
it, and essentially united to it : the world is the body of God, and 
God is the soul of the world. The Stoics, therefore, considered 



STOICISM. 141 

God and matter as one identical substance, which, on the side 
of its passive and changeable capacity they call matter, and on 
the side of its active and changeless energy, God. But since they, 
as already remarked, considered the world as ensouled by God in 
the light of a living and rational being, they were obliged to treat 
the conception of God not only in a physical but also in its ethical 
aspect. God is not only in the world as the ruling and living 
energy of this great ^wot/ (animal), but he is also the universal 
reason which rules the whole world and penetrates all matter ; 
he is the gracious Providence which cares for the individual and 
the whole ; he is wise, and is the ground of that natural law which 
commands the good and forbids the evil; he punishes and rewards; 
he possesses a perfect and blessed life. But accustomed to regard 
every thing spiritual only in a sensuous way, the Stoics were 
obliged to clothe this ideal conception of God in a material form, 
apprehending it as the vital warmth or an original fire, analogous 
to the view of the earlier natural philosophers, who held that the 
soul, and even reason itself, consisted in the vital warmth. The 
Stoics express this thought in different ways. At one time they 
call God the rational breath which passes through all nature ; at 
another, the artistic fire which fashions or begets the universe ; and 
still again the ether ; which, however, they hardly distinguish from 
the artistic fire. From these varying views, we see that it did 
not belong to the Stoics to represent the conception of God in any 
determinate kind of existence. They availed themselves of these 
expressions only to indicate that God, as the universal animating 
energy in the world, could not be disconnected from a corporeal 
agency. This identification of God and the world, according to 
which the Stoics regarded the whole formation of the universe as 
but a period in the development of God, renders their remaining 
doctrine concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the 
world seemed to them to be permeated by the divine life, and was 
regarded as but the flowing out of this most perfect life through 
certain channels, until it returned in a necessary circle back again 
to itself. It is not necessary here to speak more closely of the 
physics of this school. 



142 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

3. The Ethics. — The ethics of the Stoics is most closely con- 
nected with their physics. In the physics we saw the rational 
order of the universe as it existed through the divine thought. 
In the ethics, the highest law of human action, and thus the whole 
moral legality of life is dependent upon this rational order and 
conformity to law in universal nature, and the highest good or the 
highest end of our strivings is to shape our life according to this 
universal law, to live in conformity with the harmony of the world 
or with nature. '' Follow nature," or '' live in harmony with na- 
ture," is the moral maxim of the Stoics. More accurately : live 
in harmony with thy rational nature so far as this has not been 
distorted nor refined by art, but is held in its natural simplicity^ 

From this moral principle, in which we have also the Stoic 
conception of virtue, the peculiarities of their theory of morals 
follow with logical necessity. 

(1.) Respecting the Relation of Virtue to Pleasure. — When 
the demand is made that the life should be in conformity with 
nature, the individual becomes wholly subjected to the universal, 
and every personal end is excluded. Hence pleasure, which of 
all ends is the most individual, must be disregarded. In pleasure 
that activity in which blessedness consists is abated, and this could 
only appear to the Stoics as a restraint of life, and thus as an evil. 
Pleasure is not in conformity with nature, and is no end of nature, 
says Cleanthes; and though other Stoics relax a little from the 
strictness of this opinion, and admit that pleasure may be accord- 
ing to nature, and is to be considered in a certain degree as a good, 
yet they all held fast to the doctrine, that it has no moral worth 
and is no end of nature, but is only something which is accident- 
ally connected with the free and fitting activity of nature, while 
itself is not an activity, but a passive condition of the soul. In 
this lies the whole severity of the Stoic doctrine of morals; 
every thing personal is cast aside, every external end of action is 
foreign to the moral man, the action in wisdom is the only good. 
From this follows directly : 

(2.) The Vieiu of the Stoics Concerning External Good. — If 
virtue, as the activity in conformity to nature, is exclusively a 



STOICISM. 143 

good, and if it alone can lead to happiness, tlien external good 
of every kind is something morally indifferent, and can neither be 
the object of our striving nor the end of any moral action. The 
action itself and not that towards which it tends is good. Hence 
such special ends as health, wealth, &c., are in themselves worth- 
less and indifferent. They may result either in good or evil, and 
when deprived of them the happiness of the virtuous man is not 
destroyed. The Stoics yield from the rigor of their fundamental 
principle only in a single instance. They admit that there may 
be a distinction among indifferent things ; that while none of these 
can be called a moral good, yet some may be preferable to others, 
and that the preferable, so far as it contributes to a life in con- 
formity to nature, should enter into the account of a moral life. 
So the sage will prefer health and wealth when these are balanced 
in the choice with sickness and poverty, but though these objects 
have been rationally chosen, he does not esteem them as really 
good, for they are not the highest, they are inferior to the vir- 
tuous acting, in comparison with which every thing else sinks to 
insignificance. In makiog this distinction between the good and 
the preferable, we see how the Stoics exclude from the good every 
thing relative, and hold fast to it alone in its highest significance. 

(3.) This abstract apprehension of the conception of virtue is 
still farther verified in the rigid antagonism which the Stoics 
affirmed between virtue and not- virtue, reason and sense. Either, 
they conclude, reason is awakened in the life of man and holds 
the mastery over him, or it is not awakened, and he serves his 
irrational instincts. In the former case we have a good and in the 
latter a bad man, while between these two cases as between virtue 
and vice, there is no mean. And since virtue cannot be partially 
possessed, but the man must be wholly virtuous or not at all, it 
follows that virtue as such is without degree, just as truth is, and 
hence also all good acts are equally good, because they spring from 
the full freedom of the reason, and all vicious ones equally bad, 
because they are impelled by the irrational instinct. 

(4.) But this abstractedness of the moral stand-point, this rigid 
opposition of reason and irrationality, of the highest good and the 



144 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

individual good, of virtue and pleasure, has no power to furnish 
a system of concrete moral duties. The universal moral principle of 
the Stoics fails in its applicability to the individual instance. The 
Stoic morals has no concrete principle of moral self-determination. 
How must we act in every individual instance, in every moral 
relation, so as to act according to nature ? To this inquiry Sto- 
icism can give no answer. Its system of particular duties is thus 
wholly without a scientific form, and is only held together by 
some universal conceptions which it contains. For the most part 
they satisfy themselves with describing in general terms the action 
according to nature, and with portraying their ideal of the wise 
man. The characteristics which they give this ideal are partly 
paradoxical. The wise man is free even in chains, for he acts 
from himself unmoved by fear or desire ; the wise man alone is 
king, for he alone is not bound by laws and owes fealty to no one ; 
he is the true rich man, the true priest, prophet, and poet. He 
is exalted above all law and every custom ; even that which is 
most despicable and base — deception, suicide, murder — ^he may 
commit at a proper time and in a virtuous character. In a word 
the Stoics describe their wise man as a god, and yield it to him 
to be proud and to boast of his life like Zeus. But where shall we 
find such a sage ? Certainly not among the living. In the time 
long ago there may have been a perfect sage of such a pattern ; 
but now, and for a long time back, are men at best only fools 
who strive after wisdom and virtue. The conception of the wise 
man represented, therefore, to the Stoics only an ideal, the actu- 
alization of which we should strive after, though without ever 
hoping to reach it ; and yet their system of particular duties is 
almost wholly occupied in portraying this unreal and abstract 
ideal — a contradiction in which it is seen most clearly that their 
whole stand-point is one of abstract subjectivity. 



EPICUREANISM. 145 

SECTION XVIII. 

EPICUREANISM. 

The Epicurean school arose at Athens, almost contemporane- 
ously with the Porch, though perhaps a little earlier than this. 
Epicurus, its founder, was born 342 B.C., six years after the death 
of Plato. Of his youth and education little is known. In his 
thirty-sixth year he opened a philosophical school at Athens, 
over which he presided till his death, 271 B.C. His disciples and 
adherents formed a social league, in which they were united by 
the closest band of friendship, illustrating the general condition 
of things in Greece after the time of Alexander, when the social 
took the place of the decaying poetical life. Epicurus himself 
compared his society to the Pythagorean fraternity, although the 
community of goods, which forms an element in the latter, Epi- 
curus excludes, affirming that true friends can confide in one 
another. The moral conduct of Epicurus has been repeatedly 
assailed but, according to the testimony of the most reliable 
witnesses, his life was blameless in every respect, and his personal 
character was estimable and amiable. Moreover, it cannot be 
doubted that much of that, which is told by some, of the ofiensive 
voluptuousness of the Epicurean band, should be regarded as 
calumny. Epicurus was a voluminous writer, surpassing, in this 
respect, even Aristotle, and exceeded by Chrysippus alone. To 
the loss of his greater works he has himself contributed, by his 
practice of composing summaries of his system, which he recom- 
mended his disciples to commit to memory. These summaries 
have been for the most part preserved. 

The end which Epicurus proposed to himself in science is dis- 
tinctly revealed in his definition of philosophy. He calls it an 
activity which, by means of conceptions and arguments, procures 
the happiness of life. Its end is, therefore, with him essentially 
a practical one, and on this account the object of his whole system 



146 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

is to produce a scheme of morals which should teach us how we 
might inevitably attain a happy life. It is true that the Epicu- 
reans adopted the usual division of philosophy into logic, which 
they called canonics, physics, and ethics ; but they confined logic 
to the doctrine of the criterion of truth, and considered it only as 
an instrument and introduction to physics, while they only treated 
of physics as existing wholly for ethics, and being necessary in 
order to free men from superstitious fear, and deliver them from 
the power of fables and mythical fancies concerning nature, which 
might hinder the attainment of happiness. We have therefore in 
Epicureanism the three old parts of philosophy, but in a reversed 
order, since logic and physics here stand as the handmaids of 
ethics. We shall confine ourselves in our exposition to the latter, 
since the Epicurean canonics and physics ofi'er little scientific 
interest, and since the physics especially is not only very incom- 
plete and without any internal connection, but rests entirely upon 
the atomic theory of Democritus. 

Epicurus, like Aristotle and the other philosophers of his day, 
placed the highest good in happiness, or a happy life. More 
closely he makes pleasure to be the principal constituent of happi- 
ness, and even calls it the highest good. But Epicurus goes on to 
give a more accurate determination of pleasure, and in this he difiers 
essentially from his predecessors, the Cyrenians. {cf. ^XIII. 3.) 

1. While with Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is made 
the end of human efi'orts, Epicurus directs men to strive after 
a system of pleasures which should insure an abiding course of 
happiness for the whole life. True pleasure is thus the object to 
be considered and weighed. Many a pleasure should be despised 
because it will result in pain, and many a pain should be rejoiced 
in because it would lead to a greater pleasure. 

2. Since the sage will seek after the highest good, not simply 
for the present but for his whole life, he will hold the pleasures 
and pains of the soul, which like memory and hope stretch over 
the past and the future, in greater esteem than those of the body, 
which relate only to the present moment. The pleasure of the 
soul consists in the untroubled tranquillity of the sage, who rests 



EPICUREANISM. 147 

secure in the feeling of his inner worth and his exaltation above 
the strokes of destiny. Thus Epicurus, would say that it is better 
to be miserable but rational than to be happy and irrational, and 
that the wise man might be happy though in torture. He would 
even affirm, like a true follower of Aristotle, that pleasure and 
happiness were most closely connected with virtue, that virtue is 
in fact inseparable from true pleasure, and that there can be no 
agreeable life without virtue, and no virtue without an agreeable 
life. 

3. While other Hedonists would regard the most positive and 
intense feeling of pleasure as the highest good, Epicurus, on the 
other hand, fixed his eye on a happiness which should be abiding 
and for the whole life. He would not seek the most exquisite 
enjoyments in order to attain to a happy life, but he rather recom- 
mends one to be satisfied with little, and to practise sobriety and 
temperance of life. He guards himself against such a false ap- 
plication of his doctrine as would imply that the pleasure of the 
debauchee were the highest good, and boasts that with a little 
barley-bread and water he would rival Zeus in happiness. He 
even expresses an aversion for all costly pleasures, not, however, 
in themselves, but because of the evil consequences which they 
entail. True, the Epicurean sage need not therefore live as a 
Cynic. He will enjoy himself where he can without harm, and 
will even seek to acquire means to live with dignity and ease. But 
though all these enjoyments of life may properly belong to the 
sage, yet he can deprive himself of them without misery — though 
he ought not to do so— since he enjoys the truest and most essen- 
tial pleasure in the calmness of his soul and the tranquillity of his 
heart. In opposition to the positive pleasure of some Hedonists, 
the theory of Epicurus expends itself in negative conceptions, re- 
presenting that freedom from pain is pleasure, and that hence the 
activity of the sage should be prominently directed to avoid that 
which is disagreeable. All that man does, says Epicurus, is that 
he may neither suffer nor apprehend pain, and in another place 
he remarks, that not to live is far from being an evil. Hence 
death, for which men have the greatest terror, the wise man does 



148 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

not fear. For while we live, death is not, and when death is, w« 
are not ; when it i^ present we feel it not, for it is the end of all 
feeling, and that, which by its presence cannot affect our happiness, 
ought not, when thought of as a future, to trouble us. Here Epi- 
curus must bear the censure urged against him by the ancients, 
that he does not recognize any positive end of life, and that the 
object after which his sage should strive is a mere passionless 
state. 

The crown of Epicurus's view of the universe is his doctrine 
of the gods, where he has carried over his ideal of happiness. To 
the gods belong a human form, though without any fixed body or 
human wants. In the void space they lead an undisturbed and 
changeless life, whose happiness is incapable of increase. From 
the blessedness of the gods he inferred that they had nothing to 
do with the management of our affairs, for blessedness is repose, 
and on this account the gods neither take trouble to themselves 
nor cause it to others. It may indeed be said that these inactive 
gods of Epicurus, these indestructible and yet not fixed forms, 
these bodies which are not bodies, have but an ill connection with 
his general system, in which there is in fact no point to which his 
doctrine of the gods can be fitly joined — but a strict scientific 
connection is hardly the merit of this whole philosophy. 



SECTION XIX. 

SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY, 

This subjective direction already noticed was carried out to 
its farthest extent by the Sceptics, who broke down completely the 
bridge between subject and object, denying all objective truth, 
knowledge and science, and wholly withdrawing the philosopher 
from every thing but himself and his own subjective estimates. 
In this direction we may distinguish between the old Scepticism, 
the new Academy, and the later Scepticism. 



SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 149 

1. The old Scepticism. — PyrrJio of Elis, who was perhaps a 
cotemporary of Aristotle, was the head of the old Sceptics. He 
left no writings behind him, and we are dependent for a knowledge 
of his opinions upon his scholar and follower, Timon of Phlius. 
The tendency of these sceptical philosophers, like that of the 
Stoics and Epicureans, was a practical one, for philosophy, said 
they, ought to lead us to happiness. But in order to live happily 
we must know how things are, and, therefore, in what kind of a 
relation we stand to them. The first of these questions the Scep- 
tics answered by attempting to show that all things, without ex- 
ception, are indifferent as to truth and falsehood, uncertain, and 
in nowise subject to man's judgment. Neither our senses nor our 
opinions concerning any thing teach us any truth; to every 
precept and to every position a contrary may be advanced, and 
hence the contradictory views of men, and especially of the phi- 
losophies of the schools respecting one and the same thing. All 
objective knowledge and science being thus impossible, the true 
relation of the philosopher to things consists in the entire suspen- 
sion of judgment, and the withholding of every positive assertion. 
In order to avoid every thing like a positive assertion, the Sceptics 
had recourse to a variety of artifices, and availed themselves of 
doubtful modes of expression, such as it is possible ; it may he 
so ; perhaps ; I assert nothing, — cautiously subjoining to this 
last — not even that I assert nothing. By this suspension of 
judgment the Sceptics thought they could attain their practical 
end, happiness ; for the abstinence from all positive opinion is fol- 
lowed by a freedom from all mental disturbance, as a substance is 
by a shadow. He who has embraced Scepticism lives thencefor- 
ward tranquilly, without inquietude, without agitation, with an 
equable state of mind, and, in fact, divested of his humanity. 
Pyrrho is said to have originated the doctrine which lies at the 
basis of sceptical apathy, that no difference exists between sick- 
ness and health, or between life and death. The Sceptics, for 
the most part, derived the material for their views from the pre- 
vious investigations in the dogmatic schools. But the grounds on 
which they rested were far from being profound, and were for the 



150 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

most part either dialectic errors which could easily ibe refuted, or 
mere subtleties. The use of the following ten tropes is ascribed 
to the old Sceptics, though these were perhaps not definitely 
brought out by either Pyrrho or Timon, but were probably first 
collected by ^nesidemus, soon after the time of Cicero. The 
withholding of all decisive judgment may rest ; (1) upon the dis- 
tinction generally existing between individual living objects ; (2) 
upon the difi*erence among men ; (3) the difi'erent functions of the 
organs of sense ; (4) the circumstances under which objects ap- 
pear ; (5) the relative positions, intervals, and places ; (6) inter- 
mixtures ; (7) the quantities and modifications of the objects we 
perceive ; (8) relations ; (9) the frequent or rare occurrence ; (10) 
the different ways of life, the varieties of customs and laws, the 
mythical representations and dogmatic opinions of men. 

2. The New Academy. — Scepticism, in its conflict with the 
Stoics, as it appeared in the Platonic school established by Ar- 
cesilaus (316-241), has a far greater significance than belongs to 
the performances of the Pyrrhonists. In this school Scepticism 
sought its support by its great respect for the writings and its 
transmission of the oral teachings of Plato. Arcesilaus could 
neither have assumed nor maintained the chair of instruction in 
the Academy, had he not carefully cherished and imparted to his 
disciples the impression that his own view, respecting the with- 
holding of a decisive judgment, coincided essentially with that of 
Socrates and of Plato, and if he had not also taught that he only 
restored the genuine and original significance of Platonism, when 
he set aside the dogmatic method of teaching. An immediate 
incitement to the efforts of Arcesilaus is found in his opposition 
to the rigid dogmatic system which had lately arisen in the Porch, 
and which claimed to be in every respect an improvement upon 
Platonism. Hence, as Cicero remarks, Arcesilaus directed all his 
sceptical and polemic attacks against Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. 
He granted with his opponent that no representation should form 
a part of undoubted knowledge, if it could possibly have arisen 
through any other object than that from which it actually sprung, 
but he would not admit that there might be a notion which ex- 



SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 151 

pressed so truly and accurately its own object, that it could not 
have arisen from any other. Accordingly, Arcesilaus denied the 
existence of a criterion which could certify to us the truth of our 
knowledge. If there be any truth in our affirmations, said he, we 
cannot be certain of it. In this sense he taught that one can 
know nothing, not even that he does know nothing. But in moral 
matters, in choosing the good and rejecting the evil, he taught 
that we should follow that which is probable. 

Of the subsequent leaders in the new Academy, Carneades 
(214-129) alone need here be mentioned, whose whole philosophy, 
however, consists almost exclusively in a polemic against Stoicism 
and in the attempt to set up a criterion of truth. His positive 
performance is the attempt to bring out a philosophical theory of 
probabilities. The later Academicians fell back to an eclectic 
dogmaticism. 

3. The later Scepticism. — Once more we meet with a pe- 
culiar Scepticism at the time when Grecian philosophy had wholly 
fallen to decay. To this time belong Jj^nesidemiis^ who probably 
— though this cannot be affirmed with certainty — lived but a little 
after Cicero ; Agrippa^ whose date is also uncertain, though sub- 
sequent to ^nesidemus, and Sextus Emjpiricus — i, e, a Grecian 
physician of the empiric sect, who probably flourished in the first 
half of the third century of the Christian era. These are the 
most significant names. Of these the last has the greatest interest 
for us, from two writings which he left behind him (the hypoty- 
poses of Pyrrho in three books, and a treatise against the mathe- 
maticians in nine books), which are sources of much historical 
information. In these he has profusely collected every thing 
which the Scepticism of the ancients knew how to advance against 
the certainty of knowledge. 



152 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SECTION XX. 

THE ROMANS. 

The Romans have taken no independent part in the progress of 
philosophy. After Grecian philosophy and literature had begun 
to gain a foothold among them, and especially after three dis- 
tinguished representatives of Attic culture and eloquence — 
Carneades the Academician, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Dio- 
genes the Stoic — had appeared in Rome as envoys from Athens ; 
and after Greece, a few years later, had become a Roman province, 
and thus outwardly in a close connection with Rome, almost all 
the more significant systems of Grecian philosophy, especially the 
Epicurean (Lucretius), and the Stoic (Seneca), flourished and 
found adherents in Rome, though without gaining any real philo- 
sophical progress. The Romish philosophizing is wholly eclectic, 
as is seen in Cicero, the most important and influential philosophic 
writer among the Romans. But the popular philosophy of this 
man and of the minds akin to him cannot be strongly assailed, for, 
notwithstanding its want of origiDality and logical sequence, it 
gave philosophy a broad dissemination, and made it a means of 
universal culture. 



SECTION XXI. 

NEW PLATONISM. 

In New Platonism, the ancient mind made its last and almost 
despairing attempt at a philosophy which should resolve the dual- 
ism between the subjective and the objective. The attempt was 
made by taking on the one side a subjective stand-point, like the 
other philosophies of the post- Aristotelian time {cf, § XVI. 7) ; 



NEW PLATONISM. 153 

and on the other with the design to bring out objective determi- 
nations concerning the highest conceptions of metaphysics, and 
concerning the absolute ; in other words, to sketch a system of 
absolute philosophy. In this respect the effort was made to copy 
the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and the claim was set 
up by the new system to be a revival of the original Platonism. 
On both sides the new attempt formed the closing period of an 
ancient philosophy. It represents the last struggle, but at the 
same time the exhaustion of the ancient thinking and the dissolu- 
tion of the old philosophy. 

The first, and also the most important, representative of New 
Platonism, is Plotinus. He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, 
who taught the Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the begin- 
ning of the third century, though he left no writings behind him. 
Plotinus (A. D. 205 — 270) from his fortieth year taught philoso- 
phy at Rome. His opinions are contained in a course of hastily 
written and not closely connected treatises, which, after his death, 
were collected and published in six enneads by Porjphyry (who 
was born A. D. 233, and taught both philosophy and eloquence at 
Rome), his most noted disciple. From Rome and Alexandria, 
the New Platonism of Plotinus passed over in the fourth century 
to Athens, where it established itself in the Academy. In the 
fourth century, Jamblichus^ a scholar of Porphyry, and in the 
fifth, Produs^ (412 — 485), were prominently distinguished among 
the New Platonists. With the triumph of Christianity and the 
consequent fall of heathenism, in the course of the sixth century, 
even this last bloom of Grrecian philosophy faded away. 

The common characteristic of all the New Platonists is a ten- 
dency to mysticism, theosophy, and theurgy. The majority of 
them gave themselves up to magic and sorcery, and the most dis- 
tinguished boasted that they were the subjects of divine inspira- 
tion and illumination, able to look into the future, and to work 
miracles. They professed to be hierophants as much as philoso- 
phers, and exhibited the unmistakable tendency to represent a 
Pagan copy of Christianity, which should be at the same time a 
7* 



J.54 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

philosophy and a universal religion. In the following sketch of 
New Platonism we follow mainly the track of Plotinus. 

1. Ecstasy as a Subjective state. — The result of the philo- 
sophical strivings antecedent to New Platonism had been Scepti- 
cism ; which, seeing the impracticability of both the Stoic and 
Epicurean wisdom, had assumed a totally negative relation to 
every positive and theoretical content. But the end which Scep- 
ticism had actually gained was the opposite of that for which it 
had striven. It had striven for the perfect apathy of the sage, 
but it had gained only the necessity of incessantly opposing every 
positive affirmation. Instead of the rest which they had sought, 
they found rather an absolute unrest. This absolute unrest of 
the consciousness striving after an absolute rest, begat immediate- 
ly a longing to be freed from this unrest, a longing after some 
content which should be absolutely satisfying, and stripped of 
every sceptical objection. This longing after an absolutely true, 
found its historical expression in New Platonism. The subject 
sought to master and comprehend the absolute ; and this, neither 
by objective knowledge nor dialectic mediation, but immediately, 
by an inner and mystical mounting up of the subject in the form 
of an immediate beholding, or ecstasy. The knowledge of the 
true, says Plotinus, is not gained by proof nor by any mediation ; 
it cannot be found when the objects known remain separate from 
the subject knowing, but only when the distinction between know- 
er and known disappears ; it is a beholding of the reason in itself, 
not in the sense that we see the reason, but the reason beholds 
itself; in no other way can knowledge come. If any one has at- 
tained to such a beholding, to such a true unison with the divine, 
he will despise the pure thinking which he otherwise loved, for 
this thinking was only a movement which presupposed a difference 
between the pcrceiver and the perceived. This mystical absorp- 
tion into the Deity, or, the One, this resolving the self into the 
absolute, is that which gives to New Platonism a character so pe- 
culiarly distinct from the genuine Grecian systems of philosophy. 

2. The Cosmical Principles. — The doctrine of the three 
cosmical principles is most closely connected with the theory just 



NEW PLATONISM. 155 

t 

named. To the two cosmical principles already received, viz., tlie 
world-soul and the world-reason, a third and higher one was added 
by the New Platonists. For if the reason apprehends the true hy 
means of thinking, and not within itself alone ; if, in order to grasp 
the absolute and behold the divine, it must lose its own self- con- 
sciousness, and go out beyond itself, then reason cannot be the high- 
est principle, but there stands above it that primal essence, with 
which it must be united if it will behold the true. To this pri- 
mal essence Plotinus gives different names, as " the first," " the 
one," " the good," and " that which stands above being " (being 
is with him but a conception, which, like the reason, may be re- 
solved into a higher ground, and which, united with the reason, 
forms but the second step in the series of highest conceptions). In 
all these names, Plotinus does not profess to have satisfactorily 
expressed the essence of this primal one, but only to have given a 
representation of it. In characterizing it still farther, he denies it 
all thinking and willing, because it needs nothing and can desire 
nothing ; it is not energy, but above energy ; life does not belong 
to it ; neither being nor essence nor any of the most general cate- 
gories of being can be ascribed to it ; in short, it is that which can 
neither be expressed nor thought. Plotinus has thoroughly 
striven to think of this first principle not as first principle, i. e, 
not in its relation to that of which it is the ground, but only in 
itself, as being wholly without reference either to us or to any thing 
else. This pure abstraction, however, he could not carry out. He 
sets hiniself to show how every thing else, and especially the two 
other cosmical principles, could emanate from this first ; but in 
order to have a principle for his emanation theory, he was obliged 
to consider the first in its relation to the second and as its pro- 
ducer. 

3. The Emanation Theory of the New Platonists. — Every 
emanation theory, and hence also that of the New Platonists, con- 
siders the world as the effluence of God, and gives to the emana- 
tion a greater or less degree of perfection, according as it is 
nearer or more remote from its source. They all have for their 
principle the totality of being, and represent a progressively 



156 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ascending relation in its several parts. Fire, says Plotinus, 
emits heat, snow cold, fragrant bodies odors, and every organic 
thing so far as it is perfect begets something like itself. In the 
same way the all-perfect and the eternal, in the overflowing of his 
perfection sends out from himself that which is also eternal, and 
after him, the best, viz., the reason or world-intelligence, which is 
the immediate reflection and image of the primal one. Plotinus 
abounds in figures to show how the primal one need lose nothing 
nor become weakened by this emanation of reason. Next to the 
original one, reason is the most perfect. It contains in itself the 
ideal world, and the whole of true and changeless being. Some 
notion may be formed of its exaltation and glory by carefully be- 
holding the sensible world in its greatness, its beauty, and the order 
of its ceaseless motion, and then by rising to contemplate its 
archetype in the pure and changeless being of the intelligible 
world, and then by recognizing in intelligence the author and 
finisher of all. In it there is neither past nor future, but only an 
ever abiding present. It is, moreover, as incapable of division in 
space as of change in time. It is the true eternity, which is only 
copied by time. As reason flows from the primal one, so does the 
world-soul eternally emanate from reason, though the latter in- 
curs no change thereby. The world-soul is the copy of reason, 
permeated by it, and actualizing it in an outer world. It gives 
ideas externally to sensible matter, which is the last and lowest 
step in the series of emanations and in itself is undetermined, and 
has neither quality nor being. In this way the visible universe 
is but the transcript of the world-soul, which forms it out of mat- 
ter, permeates and animates it, and carries it forward in a circle. 
Here closes the series of emanations, and, as was the aim of the 
theory, we have been carried in a constant current from the high- 
est to the lowest, from God to the mere image of true being, or 
the sensible world. 

Individual souls, like the world-soul, are linked both to the 
higher and the lower, to reason and the sensible ; now bound with 
the latter and sharing its destiny, and anon rising to their source 
in reason. Their original and proper home was in the rational 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM, 157 

world, from whence they have come down, each one in its proper 
time, into the corporeal; not, however, wholly forsaking their ideal 
abode, but as a sunbeam touches at the same time the sun and the 
earth, so are they found alike in the world of reason and the 
world of sense. Our calling, therefore — and here we come back 
to the point from which we started in our exhibition of New Pla- 
tonism — can only be to direct our senses and aspirations towards 
our proper home, in the ideal world, and by asceticism and cruci- 
fying of the flesh, to free our better self from its participation with 
the body. But when our soul has once mounted up to the ideal 
world, that image of the originally good and beautiful, it then 
attains the final goal of all its longings and efibrts, the immediate 
union with God, through the enraptured beholding of the primal 
one in which it loses its consciousness and becomes buried and 
absorbed. 

According to all this, the New Platonic philosophy would seem 
to be a monism, and thus the most perfect development of ancient 
philosophy, in so far as this had striven to carry back the sum of 
all being to one ultimate ground. But as it attained its highest 
principle from which all the rest was derived, by means of ecstasy, 
by a mystical self-destruction of the individual person (Ichheit), 
by asceticism and theurgy, and not by means of self-conscious 
thinking, nor by any natural or rational way, it is seen that 
ancient philosophy, instead of becoming perfected in New Platon- 
ism, only makes a despairing leap beyond itself to its own self- 
destruction. 



SECTION XXII. 

CHEISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 

1. The Christian Idea. — The Grecian intellectual life at the 
time of its fairest bloom, was characterized by the immediate 
sacrifice of the subject to the object (nature, the state, &c.) : the 
full breach between the two, between spirit and nature, had not 



158 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

jet arrived ; the subject had not yet so far reflected upon him- 
self that he could apprehend his own absolute worth. This breach 
came in, with the decay of Grecian life, in the time after Alexan- 
der the Great. As the objective world lost its influence, the 
thinking consciousness turned back upon itself; but even in this 
very process, the bridge between subject and object was broken 
down. The self-consciousness had not yet become sufficiently 
absorbed in itself to look upon the true, the divine, in any other 
light than as separate from itself, and belonging to an opposite 
world ; while a feeling of pain, of unsatisfied desire, took the place 
of that fair unity between spirit and nature which had been pecu- 
liar to the better periods of the Grecian civil and artistic life. 
New Platonism, by its overleaping speculation, and, practically, 
by its mortification of the sense, made a last and despairing at- 
tempt to overcome this separation, or to bury itself within it, by 
bringing the two sides forcibly together. The attempt was in 
vain, and the old philosophy, totally exhausted, came to its end. 
Dualism is therefore the rock on which it split. This problem, 
thus left without a solution, Christianity took up. It assumed for 
its principle the idea which the ancient thinking had not known 
how to carry out, affirming that the separation between God and 
man might be overcome, and that the human and the divine could 
be united in one. The speculative fundamental idea of Chris- 
tianity is, that God has become incarnate, and this had its practi- 
cal exhibition (for Christianity was a practical religion) in the idea 
of the atonement and the demand of the new birth, i. e. the posi- 
tive purifying of the sense from its corruptions, instead of hold- 
ing it, as asceticism, in a merely negative relation. 

From the introduction of Christianity, monism has been the 
character and the fundamental tendency of the whole modern 
philosophy. In fiict, the new philosophy started from the very point 
at which the old had stood still. The turning of the self-con- 
sciousness upon itself, which was the stand-point of the post- Aris- 
totelian speculations, forms in -Descartes the starting-point of the 
new philosophy, whose whole course has been the reconciling of 
that opposition beyond which the old could not pass. 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 159 

2. Scholasticism. — It very early resulted that Christianity 
came in contact with the cotemporaneous philosophy, especially 
with Platonism. This arose first with the apologists of the second 
century, and the fathers of the Alexandrian church. Subse- 
quently, in the ninth century, Scotus Erigena made an attempt 
to combine Christianity with New Platonism, though it was not 
till the second half of the Middle Ages, from the eleventh century, 
that there was developed any thing that might be properly termed 
a Christian philosophy. This was the so-called Scholasticism. 

The effort of Scholasticism was to mediate between the dogma 
of religion and the reflecting self- consciousness ; to reconcile faith 
and knowledge. When the dogma passed over into the schools 
from the Church which had given it utterance, and theology be- 
came a science of the universities, the scientific interest asserted 
its rights, and undertook to bring the dogma which had hitherto 
stood over against the self-consciousness as an external power, 
into a closer relation to the thinking subject. A series of attempts 
was now made to bring out the doctrines of the Church in the 
form of scientific systems (the first complete dogmatic system was 
given by Peter Lombard^ who died 1164, in his four books of 
sentences, and was voluminously commented upon by the later 
Scholastics), all starting from the indisputable premise (beyond 
which scholastic thinking never reached), that the faith of the 
church is absolute truth ; but all guided likewise by the interest 
to make this revealed truth intelligible, and to show it to be ra- 
tional. " Credo ut intelligam''^ — this expression of Anselm, the 
beginner and founder of Scholasticism (he was born about 1031, 
and made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093), was the watchword 
of this whole direction. Scholasticism applied to the solution of 
its problem the most remarkable logical acumen, and brought out 
systems of doctrine like the Gothic cathedrals in their architec- 
ture. The extended study of Aristotle, called par eminence 
" the philosopher," whom many of the most distinguished Scholas- 
tics wrote commentaries upon, and who was greatly studied at the 
same period among the Arabians {Avicenna and Averroes), fur- 
nished their terminology and most of their points of view. At 



160 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the summit of Scholasticism we must place the two incontestably 
greatest masters of the Scholastic art and method, Thomas 
Aquinas (Dominican, who died 1274) and Duns Scotus (Fran- 
ciscan, who died 1808), the founders of two schools, in which since 
their time the whole Scholastic theology divides itself — the former 
exalting the understanding (intellectus)^ and the latter the will 
{voluntas)^ as their highest principle, both being driven into essen- 
tially differing directions by this opposition of a theoretical and a 
practical principle. Even with this began the downfall of 
Scholasticism ; its highest point was also the turning-point to its 
self-destruction. The rationality of the dogma, the oneness of 
faith and knowledge, had been constantly their fundamental pre- 
mise; but this premise fell away, and the whole basis of their 
metaphysics was given up in principle, the moment Duns Scotus 
placed the problem of theology in the practical. When the prac- 
tical and the theoretical became divided, and still more when 
thought and being were separated by Nominalism [cf, 3), philos- 
ophy broke loose from theology and knowledge from faith ; knowl- 
edge assumed its position above faith and above authority (modern 
philosophy), and the religious consciousness broke with the tra- 
ditional dogma (the Reformation). 

3. Nominalism and Realism. — Hand in hand with the whol^ 
development of Scholasticism, there was developed the opposition' 
between Nominalism and Realism, an opposition whose origin is ' 
to be found in the relation of Scholasticism to the Platonic and 
Aristotelian philosophy. The Nominalists were those who held « 
that the conceptions of the universal (the universalia) were" 
simple names, flatus vocis, representations without content and 
without reality. According to them there are no universal con- 
ceptions, no species, no class ; every thing which is, exists only 
as separate in its pure individuality ; there is, therefore, no pure 
thinking, but only a representation and sensuous perception. The 
Realists, on the other hand, taking pattern from Plato, held fast 
to the objective reality of the universals (universalia ante rem), 
These opposite directions appeared first between Roscellinus, who 
took the side of Nominalism, and Anselm, who advocated the 



II 



TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 161 

Realistic theory, and it is seen from this time through the whole 
period of Scholasticism, though from the age of Ahelard (born 
1079) a middle view, which was both Nominalistic and Realistic, 
held with some slight modifications the prominent place {univer- 
salia in re). According to this view the universal is only some- 
thing thought and represented, though as such it is not simply a 
product of the representing consciousness, but has also its objective 
reality in objects themselves, from which it was argued we could 
not abstract it if it were not essentially contained in them. This 
identity of thought and being, is the fundamental premise on 
which the whole dialectic course of the Scholastics rests. All 
their arguments are founded on the claim, that that which has 
been syllogistically proved is in reality the same as in logical 
thinking. If this premise is overthrown, so falls with it the whole 
basis of Scholasticism ; and there remains nothing more for the 
thinker to do, who has gone astray in his objectivity, but to fall 
back upon himself. This self-dissolution of Scholasticism actually 
appears with William of Occam (died 1347), the most influential 
reviver of that Nominalism which had been so mighty in the 
beginning of Scholasticism, but which now, more victorious 
against a decaying than then against a rising form of culture, 
plucked away its foundation from the framework of Scholastic 
dogmatism, and brought the whole structure into inevitable ruip-* 



SECTION XXIII. 

TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

The emancipation of modern philosophy from the bondage of 
Scholasticism was a gradual process. It first showed itself in a 
series of preparative movements during the fifteenth century, and 
became perfected, negatively, in the course of the sixteenth, and 
positively in the first half of the seventeenth century. 

1. Fall of Scholasticism. — The immediate ground of this 



162 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

changed direction of the time, we have already seen in the inner 
decay of Scholasticism itself Just so soon as the fundamental 
premise on which the Scholastic theology and method rested, the 
rationality of the dogma, was abandoned, the whole structure, as 
already remarked, fell to inevitable ruin. The conviction, directly 
opposed to the principle of Scholasticism, that what might be 
true dogmatically, might be false, or, at least, incapable of proof 
in the eye of the reason — a point of view from which e, g. the 
Aristotelian Pomjponatius (1462-1530) treated the doctrines of 
the future state, and in whose light Vanini subsequently went 
over the chief problems of philosophy — kept gaining ground, not- 
withstanding the opposition of the Church, and even associated 
with itself the opinion that reason and revelation could not be 
harmonized. The feeling became prevalent that philosophy must 
be freed from its previous condition of minority and servitude ; a 
struggle after a greater independence of philosophic investigation 
was awakened, and though no one yet ventured to attack directly 
the doctrine of the Church, the effort was made to shatter the 
confidence in the chief bulwark of Scholasticism, the Aristotelian 
philosophy, or what at that period was regarded as such ; (especially 
in this connection Peter Ramus^ (1515-1572) should be men- 
tioned, who fell in the massacre of St. Bartholomew). The 
authority of the Church became more and more weakened in the 
faith of the people, and the great principles of Scholasticism came 
to an end. 

2. The Results of Scholasticism. — Notwithstanding all. 
Scholasticism, was not without its positively good results. Though 
standing wholly in the service of the Church, it had, nevertheless, 
grown out of a scientific impulse, and so naturally awakened a free 
spirit of inquiry and a sense for knowledge. It made the objects 
of faith the objects of thought, it raised men from the sphere of 
unconditional faith to the sphere of doubt, of investigation and 
of knowledge, and by its very effort to demonstrate the principles 
of theology it established, though against its knowledge and de- 
sign, the authority of reason. It thus introduced to the world 
another principle than that of the old Church, the principle of the 



i\ 



TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 163 

thinking spirit, the self- consciousness of the reason, or at least 
prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the de- 
formities and unfavorable side of Scholasticism, the many absurd 
questions upon which the Scholastics divided, even their thousand- 
fold unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness 
and subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out 
of a spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this 
way under the all powerful ecclesiastical spirit of the time. Only 
when it was surpassed by the advancing spirit of the age, did 
Scholasticism, falsifying its original meaning, make common cause 
and interest with the old ecclesiasticism, and turned itself as the 
most violent opposer against the improvements of the new period. 
3. The Revival of Letters. — The revival of classic litera- 
ture contributed prominently to that change in the spirit of the 
age which marks the beginning of the new epoch of philosophy. 
The study of the ancients, especially of the Greeks, had almost 
wholly ceased in the course of the Middle Ages ; even the philoso- 
phy of Plato and Aristotle was known, for the most part, only 
through Latin translations or secondary sources ; no one realized 
the spirit of classic life, and all sense for beauty of form and ele- 
gant composition had passed away. The change was chiefly 
brought about by means of the Greek scholars who fled from Con- 
stantinople to Italy ; the study of the ancients in the original 
sources came up again ; the newly discovered art of printing 
allowed the classics to be widely circulated ; the Medicis drew 
classic scholars to their court ; all this working for a far better 
understanding of the ancient philosophy. Besarion (died 1472) 
and Ficinus (died 1499) were prominent in this movement. The 
result was presently seen. The new scholars contended against 
fhe stiff and uncouth manner in which the sciences had hitherto 
been treated, new ideas began to circulate, and there arose again 
the free, universal, thinking spirit of antiquity. In Germany, 
also, classic studies found a fruitful soil. Reuchlin (born 1454), 
Melancthon and Erasmus^ labored in this sense, and the classic 
movement, hostile as it was to the Scholastic impulse, favored 
most decidedly the growing tendencies to the Reformation. 



164 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

4. The German Reformation. — All the elements of the new 
age, the struggle against Scholasticism, the revival of letters and 
the more enlarged culture thus secured, the striving after national 
independence, the attempts of the state to free itself from the 
Church and the hierarchy, and above all, the desire of the think- 
ing self- consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from the fetters 
of authority — all these elements found their focus and point of 
union in the Grerman Reformation. Though having its root at first 
in practical, and religious, and national interests, and expending 
itself mainly upon the Christian doctrine and Church, yet was the 
Reformation in principle and in its true consequences a rupture of 
the thinking spirit with authority, a protesting against the fetters 
of the positive, a return of the mind from its self-estrangement to 
itself. From that which was without, the mind now came back to 
that which is within, and the purely human as such, the individual 
heart and conscience, the subjective conviction, in a word, the 
rights of the subject now began to be of worth. While marriage 
had formerly been regarded, though not immoral, as yet inferior to 
continence and celibacy, it appeared now as a divine institution, a 
natural law ordained of God. While poverty had formerly been 
esteemed higher than wealth, and the contemplative life of the 
monk was superior to the manual labor of the layman supporting 
himself by his own toil, yet now poverty ceased to be desirable in 
itself, and labor was no longer despised. Ecclesiastical freedom 
took the place of spiritual bondage ; monasticism and the priest- 
hood lost their power. In the same way, on the side of knowl- 
edge the individual man came back to himself, and threw off the 
restraints of authority. He was impressed with the conviction 
that the whole process of redemption must be experienced within 
himself, that his reconciliation to God and salvation was his own 
concern, for which he needed no mediation of priests, and that he 
stood in an immediate relation to God. He found his whole being 
in his faith, in the depth of his feelings and convictions. 

Since thus Protestantism sprang from the essence of the same 
spirit in which modern philosophy had its birth, the two have the 
closest relation to each other, though of course there is a specific 



TRAx\SITION TO THE MODERN PHLLOSOPHY. 165 

differeocG between the religious and the scientific principle. Yet 
in their origin, both kinds of Protestantism, that of religion and 
that of thought, are one and the same, and in their progress they 
have also gone hand in hand together. For religion, reduced to 
its simple elements, will be found to have its source, like philoso- 
phy, in the self-knowledge of the reason. 

5. The Advancement of the Natural Sciences.-— To all 
these phenomena, which should be regarded both as causes and 
as symptoms of the intellectual revolution of this period, we must 
add yet another, which essentially facilitated and gave a positive 
assistance to the freedom of the mind from the fetters of authority 
— the starting up of the natural sciences and the inductive method 
of examining nature. This epoch was a period of the most fruit- 
ful and influential discoveries in nature. The discovery of Ame- 
rica and the passage to the East Indies had already widened the 
circle of view, but still greater revolutions are connected with the 
name of a Copernicus (died 1543), Kepler (died 1630), and Ga- 
lileo (died 1642), revolutions which could not remain, without an 
influence upon the whole mode of thinking of that age, and which 
contributed prominently to break the faith in the prevailing eccle- 
siastical authority. Scholasticism had turned away from nature 
and the phenomenal world, and, blind towards that which lay be- 
fore the very eyes, had spent itself in a dreamy intellectuality ; 
but now nature rose again in honor ; her glory and exaltation, her 
infinite diversity and fulness of life became again the immediate 
objects of observation ; to investigate nature became an essential 
object of philosophy, and scientific empiricism was thus regarded 
as a universal and essential concern of the thinking man. From 
this time the natural sciences date their historical importance, for 
only from this time have they had an uninterrupted history. The 
results of this new intellectual movement can be readily estimated, 
Such a scientific investigation of nature not only destroyed a 
series of traditional errors and prejudices, but, what was of 
greater importance, it directed the intellectual interest towards 
that which is real and actual, it nourished and protected the self- 
thinking and feeling of self-dependence, the spirit of inquiry and 



166 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

proof. The stand-point of observation and experiment presupposes 
an independent self-consciousness of the individual, a breaking 
loose from authority — in a word, scepticism, with which, in fact, 
the founders of modern philosophy. Bacon and Descartes^ began ; 
the former by conditioning the knowledge of nature upon the re- 
moval of all prejudice and every preconceived opinion, and the 
latter by demanding that philosophy should be begun with uni- 
versal doubt. No wonder that a bitter struggle should soon break 
out between the natural sciences and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, 
which could only result in breaking the power of the latter. 

6. Bacon of Yerulam. — ^Francis of Verulam was born in 
1561, and was Lord High Chancellor of England and keeper of 
the king's seal under James I. From these offices he was subse- 
quently expelled, and died in 1626, with a character which has 
not been without reproach. He took as his principle the induc- 
tive method, which he directed expressly against Scholasticism 
and the ruling scientific method. On this account he is frequent- 
ly placed at the head of modern philosophy. 

The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto been in a most sad 
condition. Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logoma- 
chies, has failed during so many centuries to bring out a single 
work or experiment of actual benefit to human life. Logic hith- 
erto has served more to the establishment of error than to the 
investigation of truth. Whence all this ? Why this penury of the 
sciences ? Simply because they have broken away from their 
root in nature and experience. The blame of this is chargeable 
to many sources ; first, the old and rooted prejudice that the human 
mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much 
and continuously with experiments and material things ; next, su- 
perstition and a blind religious zeal, which has been the most irre- 
concilable opposer to natural philosophy; again, the exclusive 
attention paid to morals and politics by the Romans, and since the 
Christain era to theology by every acute mind ; still farther, the 
great authority which certain philosophers have professed, and 
the great reverence given, to antiquity ; and in fine, a want of cour- 
age and a despair of overcoming the many and great difficulties 



TK.ANSITIOK TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 167 

which lie in the way of the investigation of nature. All these 
causes have contributed to keep down the sciences. Hence they 
must now be renewed, and regenerated, and reformed in their 
most fundamental principles ; there must now be found a new 
basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical 
reformation of the sciences depends upon two conditions, object- 
ively upon the referring of science to experience and the philos- 
ophy of nature, and subjectively upon the purifying of the sense 
and the intellect from all abstract theories and traditional preju- 
dices. Both conditions furnish the correct method of natural 
science, which is nothing other than the method of induction. 
Upon a true induction depends all the soundness of the sciences. 

In these propositions the Baconian philosophy is contained. 
The historical significance of its founder is, therefore, in general 
this, — that he directed the attention and reflection of his cotem- 
poraries again upon the given actuality, upon nature ; that he af- 
firmed the necessity of experience, which had been formerly only 
a matter of accident, and made it as in and for itself an object of 
thought. His merit consists in having brought up the principle 
of scientific empiricism, and only in this. Strictly speaking, we 
can allow no content to the Baconian philosQ|^y, although (in his 
treatise de augmentis scientiarum) he has attempted a systematic 
encyclopedia of the sciences according to a new principle of classi- 
fication, through which he has scattered an abundance of fine and 
fruitful observations, which are still used as apothegms. 

7. The Italian Philosophers of the Transition Epoch. — 
Besides Bacon, other phenomena must be noticed which have pre- 
pared and introduced the new age of philosophy. First among 
these is a list of Italian philosophers, from the second half of the 
sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. These 
philosophers are connected in a twofold manner with the movements 
already sketched of this transition period, first by an enthusiasm 
for nature which among them all partook in a greater or less degree 
of pantheism (Yanini e. g, gave to one of his writings the title '' con- 
cerning the wonderful secrets of nature, the queen and goddess 
of mortals"), and second, by their connection with the systems of 



168 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ancient philosophy. The best known of these philosophers are 
the following: Gardanus (1501-1575), Camjpanella (1568-1639), 
Giordano Bruno (— 1600), Vanini (1586-1619.) They were all 
men of a passionate, enthusiastic and impetuous nature, unsteady 
and wild in character, restless and adventurous in life, men who 
were inspired by an eager impulse towards knowledge, but who 
were carried away by great fantasy, wildness of imagination, and 
a seeking after secret astrological and geomantic knowledge. For 
these reasons they also passed away, leaving no fruitful result 
behind. They were all persecuted by the hierarchy, and two of 
them (Bruno and Vaniri) ended their lives at the stake. In their 
whole historical appearance they are like the eruption of a volcano, 
and are to be regarded more as forerunners and announcers than as 
beginners and founders of the new age of philosophy. The most 
important among them is Giordano Bruno, He reviewed the old 
idea of the Stoics, that the world is a living being, and that a 
world-soul penetrates it all. The content of his general thought 
is the profoundest enthusiasm for nature, and the plastic reason . , 
which is present in it. The reason is, according to him, the inner! I 
artist who shapes the matter and manifests himself in the forms 
of the universe. Fn^m the heart of the root or the germ he sends 
out the lobes, and from these again he evolves the shoots, and 
from the shoots the branches, until bud, and leaf, and blossom are 
brought forth. Every thing is arranged, adjusted, and perfected 
within. Thus the universal reason calls back from within the 
sap out of the fruits and flowers to the branches again, &c. The 
universe thus is an infinite living thing, in which every thing lives 
and moves after the most manifold way. 

The relation of the reason to matter, Bruno determines wholly 
in the Aristotelian manner ; both stand related to each other as 
form and matter, as actuality and potentiality, neither is without 
the other ; the form is the inner impelling might of matter, and 
matter, as the unlimited possibility, as the capability for an infi- 
nite diversity of form, is the mother of all forms. The other side 
of Bruno's philosophizing, his elaboration of the topics of Lullus, 



TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 169 

which occupies the greater part of his writings, has little philosophic 
interest, and we therefore pass it by. 

8. Jacob Boehme. — As Bacon among the English and Bruno 
among the Italians, so Jacob Boehme is the index among the 
Germans of this transition period. Each one of these three indi- 
cates it in a way peculiar to his own nationality ; Bacon as the 
herald of empiricism, Bruno as the representative of a poetic pan- 
theism, and Boehme as the father of the theosophic mysticism. 
If we regarded alone the profoundness of his principle, Boehme 
should hold a much later place in the history of philosophy, but 
if we looked chiefly at the imperfect form of his philosophizing, 
his rank would be assigned to the mystics of the Middle Ages, 
while chronologically we must associate him with the German 
Reformation and the protestant elements that were nourished at 
that time. His true position is among the forerunners and 
prophets of the new age. 

Jacob Boehme was born in 1575, in old Seidenburg, a village 
of upper Lusace, not far from Goerlitz. His parents were poor 
peasants. In his boyhood he took care of the cattle, and in his 
youth, after he had acquired the rudiments of reading and writing 
in a village school, he was sent to Goerlitz to learn the shoe- 
maker's art. He finished his apprenticeship and settled down at 
Goerlitz in 1594 as master of his trade. Even in his youth he 
had received illuminations or mysterious revealings, which were 
subsequently repeated when his soul, striving for the truth, had 
become profoundly agitated by the religious conflicts of the age. 
Besides the Bible, the only books which Boehme read were some 
mystical writings of a theosophic and alchymistic content, e, g, 
those of Paracelsus. His entire want of culture is seen as soon 
as he undertakes to write down his thoughts, or, as he calls them, 
his illuminations. Hence the imperious struggle of the thought 
with the expression, which, however, not unfrequently rises to a 
dialectical acuteness and a poetic beauty. His first treatise, Au- 
rora, composed in the year 1612, brought Boehme into trouble 
with the chief pastor in Goerlitz, Gregorious Richter, who pub- 
licly condemned the book from the pulpit, and even ridiculed the 



170 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

person of its author. The writing of books was prohibited him 
by a magistrate, a prohibition which Boehme observed for many 
years, till at length the command of the spirit was too mighty 
within him, and he took up again his literary labors. Boehme 
was a plain, quiet, modest and gentle man. He died in 1624. 

To give an exhibition of his theosophy in a few words is very 
difficult, since Boehme, instead of clothing his thoughts in a logical 
form, dressed them only in pictures of the sense and obscure 
analogies, and often availed himself of the most arbitrary and 
singular modes of expression. A twilight reigns in his writings, 
as in a Gothic cathedral where the light falls through variegated 
windows. Hence the magic effect which he has made upon many 
hearts. The chief thought of his philosophizing is this, viz., that 
the distinguishing of the self from the not-self is the essential de- 
termination of spirit, and hence of God so far as God is to be ap- 
prehended as spirit. God, according to Boehme, is living spirit 
only at the time and in the degree in which he conceives the dis- 
tinction within himself from himself, and is in this distinction 
object and consciousness. The distinction of God in himself is 
the only source of his and of all actuosity and spontaneity, the 
spring and fountain of that self-active life which produces con- 
sciousness out of itself. Boehme is inexhaustible in images by 
which this negativity in God, his self-distinguishing and self-re- 
nunciation to the world, may be made conceivable. The great 
expansion without end, he says, needs limitation and a compass 
in which it may manifest itself, for in expansion without limit 
there could be no manifestation, there must be a contraction and 
an enclosing, in order that a manifestation may arise. See, he 
says in another place, if the will were only of one kind, then would 
the soul have only one quality, and were an immovable thing, 
which would always lie still and never do any thing farther than 
one thing ; in this there could be no joy, as also no art nor science 
of other things, and no wisdom ; every thing would be a nothing, 
and there would be neither heart nor will for any thing, for there 
would be only the single. Hence it cannot be said that the whole 
God is in one will and essence, there is a distinction. Nothing 



TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 171 

can ever become manifest to itself without resistance, for if it has 
nothing resisting, it expends itself and never comes to itself again ; 
but if it does not come to itself again except in that from which it 
has originally sprung, it thus knows nothing of its original con- 
dition. The above thought Boehme expresses when he says in his 
Questionibus Theosophicis ; the reader should know that in yea 
and nay all things consist, whether divine, devilish, earthly, or 
whatever may be named. The one as the yea, is simple energy 
and love, and is the truth of God and God himself. But this 
were inconceivable, and there were neither delight, nor import- 
ance, nor sensibility, without the nay. The nay is thrown in the 
way of the yea, or of truth, in order that the truth may be mani- 
fest and something, in which there may be a contrarium, where 
eternal love may work and become sensitive and willing. There 
is nothing in the one which is an occasion for willing until the one 
becomes duplicated, and so there can be no sensation in unity, but 
only in duality. In brief, according to Boehme, neither know- 
ledge nor consciousness is possible, without distinction, without 
opposition, without duplication ; a thing becomes clear and an 
object of consciousness only through something else, through its 
own opposition identical with its own being. It was very natural 
to connect this thought of a unity distinguishing itself in itself, 
with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as Boehme has, in fact, 
repeatedly done when treating of the Divine life and its process 
of duplication. Schelling afterwards took up these ideas of 
Boehme and philosophically elaborated them. 

If we should assign to the theosophy of Boehme a position in 
the development of later philosophy corresponding to the inner 
content of its principle, it would most properly be placed as a 
complement to the system of Spinoza. If Spinoza taught the 
flowing back of all the finite into the eternal one, Boehme, on the 
other hand, shows the procession of the finite from the eternal one, 
and the inner necessity of this procession, since the being of this 
one would be rather a not-being without such a self-duplication. 
Compared with Descartes, Boehme has at least more profoundly 
apprehended the conception of self consciousness and the relation 



172 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



of the finite to God. But his historical position in other respects 
is far too isolated and exceptional, and his mode of statement far 
too impure, to warrant us in incorporating him anywhere in a 
series of systems developed continuously and in a genetic con- 
nection. 



SECTION XXIV. 



DESCAKTES. 

The beginner and founder of modern philosophy is Descartes, 
While he, like the men of the transition epoch just noticed, broke 
loose entirely from the previous philosophizing, and began his 
work wholly de novo^ yet he did not content himself, like Bacon, 
with merely bringing out a new method, or like Boehme and his 
cotemporaries among the Italians, with affirming philosophical 
views without a methodical ground. He went further than any 
of these, and making his stand-point one of universal doubt, he 
affirms a new, positive, and pregnant philosophical principle, from 
which he attempted logically to deduce the chief points of his 
system. The character and novelty of his principle makes him 
the beginner, and its inner fruitfulness the founder, of modern 
philosophy. 

Rene Descartes [Eenatus Cartesius) was born in 1596, at La 
Haye in Torraine. Possessing an independent property, he volun- 
teered as a soldier in his twenty-first year, and served in the wars 
with the Dutch, the Bavarians, and the Imperialists. After this 
he travelled a good deal, and then abode a considerable time in 
Paris. In 1629 he left his native land, and betook himself to 
Holland, that he might there, undisturbed and unknown, devote 
himself to philosophy, and elaborate his scientific ideas. He spent 
twenty years in Holland, enduring much vexatious treatment from 
fanatical theologians, till in 1649 he accepted an invitation from 
Queen Christina of Sweden, to visit Stockholm, where he died in 
the following year. 



DESCARTES. 173 

The chief content of the Cartesian system may be seen con- 
densed in the following epitome. 

1. If science would have any thing fixed and abiding, it must 
begin with the primal ground of things; every presupposition 
which we may have cherished from infancy must be abandoned ; 
in a word, we must doubt at every point to which the least uncer- 
tainty is attached. We must therefore doubt not only the exist- 
ence of the objects of sense, since the senses so frequently deceive, 
but also the truths of mathematics and geometry — for, however 
evident the proposition may appear that two and three make five, 
or that the square has four sides, yet we cannot know but what 
God may have designedly formed us for erroneous judgments. 
It is therefore advisable to doubt every thing, in fact to deny 
everything, to posit every thing as false. 

2. But though we posit every thing as false to which the slight- 
est doubt maybe attached, yet we cannot deny one thing, viz., the 
truth that we, who so think, do exist. But rather from the very 
fact that I posit every thing as false, that I doubt every thing, 
is it manifest that I, the doubter, exist. Hence the proposition: 
I think, therefore I am {cogito ergo sum), is the first and most 
certain position which offers itself to every one attempting to 
philosophize. Upon this the most certain of all propositions, the 
certainty of all other knowledge depends. The objection of Gas- 
sendi that the truth of existence follows from any other activity 
of man as well as from thinking, that I might just as well say : I 
go to walk, therefore I exist, — has no weight; for, of all my 
actions, I can be absolutely certain only of my thinking. 

3. From the proposition I think, therefore, I am, the whole 
nature of the mind may be determined. When we examine who 
we are who hold every thing to be false that is distinct from our- 
selves, we see clearly that neither extension nor figure, nor any 
thing which can be predicated of body, but only thought, belongs 
to our nature. I am therefore only a thinking being, i. e. mind, 
soul, intelligence, reason. Thought is my substance. Mind can 
therefore be apprehended clearly and completely for itself alone, 
without any of those attributes which belong to body. Its con- 



174 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



ception contains nothing of that which belongs to the conception 
of body. It is therefore impossible to apprehend it through any 
sensuous representation, or to make an image of it : it apprehends 
itself only through the pure intelligence. 

4. From the proposition cogito ergo sum, follows still farther 
the universal rule of all certainty. I am certain that I am a 
thinking being, what now is involved in the fact that I am certain 
of any thing ? Whence comes this certainty ? From no other 
source than the knowledge that this first proposition contains a 
clear conception of that which I affirm. I know of a certainty that 
I am, and I know any thing else only when I know it as certainly 
as I know that I am. Hence I may regard it as a universal rule, 
that every thing is true which I know clearly and determinately. 

5. This rule, however, is only a principle of certainty, not of 
knowledge and of truth. We apply it therefore to our thoughts 
or ideas, in order to discover what is objectively true. But our 
ideas are partly innate, partly acquired, and partly self-originated. 
Among those of the first class we find the idea of a God. The 
question arises, whence have we this idea ? Manifestly not from 
ourselves ; this idea could only be implanted within us by a being 
who has the fulness of all perfection in himself, i. e. only by an 
actually existing God. If I ask now the question, whence have I 
the faculty to conceive of a nature more perfect than my own ? the 
answer must ever come, that I have it only from him whose nature 
is actually more perfect. All the attributes of God, the more I 
contemplate them, show that their idea could not have originated 
with myself alone. For though there might be in me the idea 
of substance because I am a substance, yet I could not of myself 
have the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite ; such an 
idea could only be given me through a substance actually infinite. 
Moreover, we must not think that the conception of the infinite is 
to be gained through abstraction and negation, as we might gain 
darkness through the negation of light ; but I perceive, rather, 
that the infinite contains more reality than the finite, and that, 
therefore, the conception of the infinite must be correspondingly 
antecedent in me to that of the finite. Since then I have a clear 



DESCARTES. 175 

and determined idea of the infinite substance, and since ttis has a 
greater objective reality than every other, so is there no other 
which I have so little reason to doubt. But now since I am cer- 
tain that the idea of God has come to me from God himself, it 
only remains for me to examine the way in which I have received 
it from God. I have never derived it directly nor indirectly from 
the sense, for ideas through the sense arise only by affecting the 
external organs of sense ; neither have I devised it, for I can 
neither add to it nor diminish it in any respect, — it must, there- 
fore, be innate as the idea of myself is innate. Hence the first 
proof we can assign for the being of a God is the fact that we 
find the idea of a God within us, and that we must have a cause 
for its being. Again, the being of a God may be concluded from 
my own imperfection, and especially from the knowledge of my 
imperfection. For since I know that there is a perfection which 
is wanting in me, it follows that there must exist a being who is 
more perfect than I, on whom I depend and from whom I receive 
all I possess. — But the best and most evident proof for the being 
of a God is, in fine, that which is gained from the conception of 
a God. The mind among all its different ideas singles out the 
chiefest of all, that of the most perfect being, and perceives that 
this has not only the possibility of existence, i. e. accidental ex- 
istence like all other ideas, but that it possesses necessary exist- 
ence in itself. And as the mind knows that in every triangle its 
three angles are equal to two right angles^ because this is involved 
in the very idea of a triangle, so does the mind necessarily infer 
that necessary existence belongs to the conception of the most 
perfect being, and that, therefore, the most perfect being actually 
exists. No other idea which the mind finds within itself contains 
necessary existence, but from the idea of the highest being exist- 
ence cannot be separated without contradiction. It is only our 
prejudices which keep us from seeing this. Since we are accus- 
tomed in every thing to separate its conception from its existence, 
and since we often make ideas arbitrarily, it readily happens, that 
when we contemplate the highest being we are in doubt whether 
its idea may not be one also arbitrarily devised, or at least one in 



176 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

whose conception existence does not lie. — This proof is essentially 
different from that of Thomas (x\nselm of Canterbury). His 
argument was as follows : '' If we understand what is indicated 
by the word God, it is all that can be conceived of greatness ; but 
now there is actually and in thought more belonging to him than 
the word represents, and therefore God exists not only in word 
(or representation), but in fact." Here the deftct in the syllogism 
is manifest, for from the premise it could only be concluded that 
God must therefore be represented as existing in fact, while his 
actual existence would not follow. My proof on the other hand 
is this, — we may predicate of a thing what we clearly see belongs 
to its true and changeless nature, or to its essence, or to its form. 
But now after we had examined what God is, we found existence 
to belong to his true and changeless nature, and therefore may we 
properly predicate existence of God. Necessary existence is con- 
tained in the idea of the most perfect being, not by a fiction of 
our understanding but because existence belongs to his eternal and 
changeless nature. 

6. The result just found — the existence of God — is of the 
highest consequence. Before attaining this we were obliged to 
doubt every thing, and give up even every certainty, for we did 
not know but that it belonged to the nature of the human mind 
to err, but that God had created us for error. But so soon as we 
look at the necessary attributes of God in the innate idea of him, 
so soon as we know that he is true, it would be a contradiction to 
suppose that he would deceive us, or that he could have made us 
to err ; for though an ability to deceive might prove his skill, a 
willingness to deceive would only demonstrate his frailty. Our 
reason, therefore, can never apprehend an object which would not 
be true so far as the reason apprehended it, i, e. so far as it is 
clearly known. For God might justly be styled a deceiver if he 
had given us a reason so perverted as to hold the false for the true. 
And thus every absolute doubt with which we began is dispelled. 
From the being of God we derive every certainty. For every 
sure knowledge it is only necessary that we have clearly known a 



DESCARTES. 177 

thing, and are also certain of the existence of a God, who would 
not deceive. 

7. From the true idea of God follow the principles of a phi- 
losophy of nature or the doctrine of the two substances. Substance 
is that which so exists that it needs nothing else for its existence. 
In this (highest) sense God is the only substance. God, as the 
infinite substance, has his ground in himself, is the cause of him- 
self. The two created substances, on the other hand, the thinking 
and the corporeal substance, mind and matter, are substances 
only in a broader sense of the word ; they may be apprehended 
under the common conception that they are things which need 
only the co-operation of God for their existence. Each of these 
two substances has an attribute which constitutes its nature and 
its essence, and to which all its other determinations may be re- 
ferred. The attribute and essence of matter is extension, that of 
mind, thought. For every thing else which can be predicated of 
body presupposes extension, and is only a mode of extension, as 
every thing we can find in mind is only a modification of thought. 
A substance to which thought immediately belongs is called 
mind, and a substance, whose immediate substratum is extension, 
is called body. Since thought and extension are distinct from 
each other, and since mind cannot only be known without the 
attributes of the body, but is in itself the negation of those attri- 
butes, we may say that the essence of these substances is in their 
reciprocal negation. Mind and body are wholly distinct, and 
have nothing in common. 

8. We pass by the physics of Descartes, which has only a sub- 
ordinate philosophical interest, and notice next his views of anthro- . 
pology. From this dualistic relation between mind and matter^ 
there follows a dualistic relation between soul and body. If 
matter is essentially extension, and mind essentially thought, and 
if the two have nothing in common, then the union of soul and 
body can be conceived only as a mechanical one. The body is to 
be regarded as an artistic automaton, which God has made, as a 
statue or machine formed by God from the earth. Within this 
body the soul dwells, closely but not internally connected with it. 



178 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

The union of the two is only a powerful bringing of the two to- 
gether, since each is not only an independent factor, but is essen- 
tially distinct from and even opposed to the other. The body by 
itself is a machine fully prepared, in which nothing is changed by 
the entrance of the thinking soul, except that through it certain 
motions are secured : the wheel-work of the machine remains as 
it was. It is only thought which distinguishes this machine from 
every other ; hence, therefore, brutes which are not self-conscious 
nor thinking, must be ranked with all other machines. From this 
stand-point arose especially the question concerning the seat of 
the soul. If body and soul are independent substances, each essen- 
tially opposed to the other, they cannot interpenetrate each other, 
but can touch only at one point when they are powerfully brought 
together. This point where the soul has its seat, is, according to 
Descartes, not the whole brain but the pineal gland, a little kernel 
in the middle of the brain. The proof for this claim, that the 
pineal gland is the only place where the soul immediately exhibits 
its energy, is found in the circumstance that all other parts of the 
brain are twofold, which should not be in an organ where the soul 
has its seat, else objects would appear double. There is, there- 
fore, no other place in the body where impressions can be so well 
united as in this gland. The pineal gland is, therefore, the chief 
seat of the soul, and the place where all our thoughts are formed. 
We have thus developed the fundamental thoughts of the Car- 
tesian system, and will now recapitulate in a few words the fea- 
tures characteristic of its stand-point and historic position. 
Descartes was the founder of a new epoch in philosophy, firsts 
from his postulate of universal freedom from all preconceptions. 
His protesting against every thing which is not posited by the 
thought, against taking any thing for granted in respect of the 
truth, has remained from that time onward the fundamental prin- 
ciple of the new age. Secondly. Descartes has brought out the 
principle of self-consciousness (the mind or the thinking substance 
is regarded by him as an individual self, a particular Ego) — anew 
principle, unknown in this view to the ancients. Thirdly. Des- 
cartes has shown the opposition between being and thought, exist- 



d 



DESCARTES. 179 

ence and consciousness, and the mediation of this opposition, 
which has been the problem of the whole modern philosophy, he 
first affirmed as the true philosophical problem. But with these 
ideas, which make an epoch in the history of philosophy, there are 
at the same time connected the defects of the Cartesian philoso- 
phizing. First. Descartes gained the content of his system, 
namely his three substances, empirically. True, the system which 
begins with a protestation against all existence would seem to take 
nothing for granted, but to derive every thing from the thinking. 
But in fact this protesting is not thoroughly carried out. That 
which seems to be cast aside is afterwards, when the principle of 
certainty is gained, taken up again unchanged. And so it hap- 
pens that Descartes finds at hand not only the idea of God, but 
his two substances as something immediately given. True, in 
order to reach them, he abstracts every thing which lies immedi- 
ately before him, but in the end the two substances are seen as 
that which remains when all else is abstracted. They are received 
empirically. The second defect is, that Descartes separates so 
wholly from each other the two sides of the opposition between 
thought and being. He posits both as " substances," i. e, as 
powers, which reciprocally exclude and negate each other. The 
essence of matter according to him consists only in extension, i. e. 
in the pure being extra se {Aitssersichsein)^ and that of mind 
only in thought, i. e. in the pure being in se {Insiclisein.) The 
two stand over against each other as centrifugal and centripetal. 
But with this apprehension of mind and matter, an inner media- 
tion of the two is an impossibility ; there must be a powerful act 
of creation, there must be the divine assistance in order that the 
two sides may ever come together, and be united as they are in 
man. Nevertheless Descartes demands and attempts such a 
mediation of the two sides. But the impossibility of truly over- 
coming the dualism of his stand-point is the third, and the chief 
defect of his system. In the proposition " I think, therefore I 
am," or ^' I am thinking," the two sides, being and thought, are 
indeed connected together, but only that they may become fixed 
independently in respect of each other. If the question is asked, 



180 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

how does the Ego stand related to the extended ? the answer can 
only be : by thinking, i. e. negatively, by excluding it. The idea 
of God, therefore, is all that remains for the mediation of these 
two sides. The two substances are created by God, and through 
the divine will may be bound together ; through the idea of God, 
the Ego attains the certainty that the extended exists. God is 
therefore in a certain degree a Deus ex machina^ necessary in 
order to mediate the conflict of the Ego with the extended. It 
is obvious how external such a mediation is. 

This defect of the Cartesian system operated as an impelling 
motive to those which succeeded. 



SECTION XXV. 

GEULINCX AND MALEBKANCHE. 

1. Mind and matter, consciousness and existence, Descartes 
had fixed in the farthest separation from each other. Both, 
with him, are substances, independent powers, reciprocally exclud- 
ing oppositions. Mind (t. e. in his view the simple self, the Ego) 
he regarded as essentially the abstraction from the sensuous, the 
distinguishing itself from matter and the separating of matter 
from itself; matter was essentially the complete opposition to 
thought. If the relation of these two powers be as has been 
given, then the question arises, how can there ever be a filiation 
{Rapport) between them ? How, on the one hand, can the afi"ec- 
tions of the body work upon the soul, and on the other hand, how 
can the volition of the soul direct the body, if the two are ab- 
solutely distinct and opposed to each other ? At this point, 
Arnold Geulincx (a disciple of Descartes, born at Antwerp 1625, 
and died as professor of philosophy at Leyden 1669) took up the 
Cartesian system, and endeavored to give it a greater logical perfec- 
tion. According to Geulincx neither the soul works immediately 



GUELINCX AND MALEBRANCHE. 181 

upon the body, nor the body immediately upon the soul. Certainly 
not the former : for though 1 can determine and move my body in 
many respects arbitrarily, yet I am not the cause of this move- 
ment ; for I know not how it happens, I know not in what man- 
ner motion is communicated from my brain to the different parts 
of my body, and it is impossible that I should do that in respect 
of which I cannot see how it is done. But if I cannot produce 
motion in my body, much less can I do this outside of my body. 
I am therefore simply a contemplator of the world ; the only act 
which is peculiarly mine is contemplation. But even this contem- 
plation arises in a singular manner. For if we ask how we ob- 
tain our observations of the external world, we find it impossible 
that the external world should directly give them to us. For 
however much we may say that, e, g, in the act of seeing, the ex- 
ternal objects produce an image in my eye or an impression in 
my brain as in wax, yet this impression or picture is after all only 
something corporeal or material, and cannot therefore come into 
my mind, which is absolutely distinct from every thing material. 
There remains, therefore, only that we seek the mediation of the 
two sides in God. It is God alone who can unite the outer with 
the inner, and the inner with the outer ; who can make the outer 
phenomena to become inner representations or notions of the mind ; 
who can thus bring the world within the mind's observation, and 
the inner determinations of the will outward into deed. Hence 
every working, every act which unites the outer and inner, which 
brings the mind and the world into connection, is neither a work- 
ing of the mind nor of the world, but only an immediate working 
of God. The movement of my limbs does not follow from my 
will, but only because it is the will of God that these movements 
should follow when I will. My will is an occasion by which God 
moves my body — an affection of my body is an occasion by which 
God brings within me a representation of the external world : the 
one is only the occasional cause of the other (hence the name oc- 
casionalism). My will, however, does not move God to move my 
limbs, but he who has imparted motion to matter and given it its 
laws, created also my will, and has so connected together the most 



182 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

diverse things, the movement of matter and the arbitrium of my 
will, that when my will puts forth a volition, such a motion fol- 
lows as it wills, and the motion follows the volition without any 
interaction or physical influence exerted by the one upon the 
other. But Just as it is with two clocks which go exactly alike, 
the one striking precisely as the other, their harmony is not the 
result of any reciprocal interacting, but follows because both have 
been fashioned and directed alike, — so is it with the movements 
of the body and the will, they harmonize only through that exalted 
artist who has in this ineffable way connected them together. 
We see from this that Geulincx has carried to its limit the 
dualistic basis of Descartes. While Descartes called the union 
of mind and matter a conjunction through power, G-eulincx named 
it a miracle. There is consequently in this view no immanent, 
but only a transcendent mediation possible. 

2. Closely connected with this view of Geulincx, and at the 
same time a real consequence and a wider development of the 
Cartesian philosophizing, is the philosophic stand-point of Nicolas 
Malehranche, He was born at Paris in 1638, chosen a member 
of the " Congregation de Voraioire'''' in his twenty-second year, 
won over io philosophy through the writings of Descartes, and 
died, after numerous feuds with theological opposers, in 1715. 

Malebranche started with the Cartesian view of the relation 
between mind and matter. Both are strictly distinct from each 
other, and in their essence opposed. How now does the mind, 
(^. e. the Ego) gain a knowledge of the external world and have 
ideas of corporeal things ? For it comes to know things only by 
means of ideas, — not through itself, not immediately. Now the 
mind can neither gain these ideas from itself, nor from the things 
themselves. Not from itself, for it is absolutely opposed to the 
bodily world, and hence has no capacity to idealize, to spirit- 
ualize material things, though they must become spiritualized be- 
fore they can be introduced to the mind ; in a word, the mind, 
which in relation to the material world is only an opposition, has 
no power to destroy this opposition. Just as little has the 
mind derived these ideas from things : for matter is not visible 



GEULINCX AND MALEBRANCHE. 183 

through itself, but rather as antithetic to mind is it that which is 
absolutely unintelligible, and which cannot be idealized, that which 
is absolutely without light and clearness. — It only remains, there- 
fore, that the mind beholds things in a third that stands above the 
opposition of the two, viz., God. God, as the absolute substance, 
is the absolute ideality, the infinite power to spiritualize all things. 
Material things have no real opposition for God, to him they are 
no impenetrable darkness, but an ideal existence ; all things are 
in him spiritually and ideally ; the whole world, as intellectual or 
ideal, is God. God is, therefore, the higher mean between the Ego 
and the external world. In him we behold ideas, we being so 
strictly united with him, that he may properly be called the place 
of minds. 

The philosophy of Malebranche, whose simple thought is this, 
that we know and see all things in God, — shows itself, like the 
occasionalism of Geulincx, to be a peculiar attempt to stand upon 
the basis of the Cartesian philosophy, and with its fundamental 
thought to overcome its dualism. 

3. Two defects or inner contradictions have manifested them- 
selves in the philosophy of Descartes. He had considered mind 
and matter as substances, each one of which excluded the other 
from itself, and had sought a mediation of the two. But with 
such conditions no mediation other than an external one is possi- 
ble. If thought and existence are each one substance, then can 
they only negate and exclude each other. Unnatural theories, like 
those which have been mentioned, are the inevitable result of this. 
The simplest way out of the difficulty is to give up the principle 
first assumed, to strip off their independence from the two oppo- 
sites, and instead of regarding them as substances, view them as 
accidents of one substance. This way of escape is moreover indi- 
cated by a particular circumstance. According to Descartes, God 
is the infinite substance, the peculiar substance in the proper sense 
of the word. Mind and matter are indeed substances, but only in 
relation to each other ; in relation to God they are dependent, and 
not substances. This is, strictly taken, a contradiction. The 
true consequence were rather to say that neither the Ego {i. e. the 



184 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



individual thinking) nor the material things are independent, but 
that this can be predicated only of the one substance, God ; this 
substance alone has a real being, and all the being which belongs 
to individual essences these latter possess not as a substantial be- 
ing, but only as accidents of the one only true and real substance. 
Malebranche approached this consequence. With him the bodily 
world is ideally at least resolved and made to sink in God, in 
whom are the eternal archetypes of all things. But Spinoza has 
most decidedly and logically adopted this consequence, and affirmed 
the accidence of all individual being and the exclusive substan- 
tiality of God alone. His system is the perfection and the truth 
of the Cartesian. 



1 



SECTION XXVI. 

SPINOZA. 

Baruch or Benedict Spinoza was born at Amsterdam, Nov. 
24, 1632. His parents were Jews of Portuguese descent, and 
being merchants of opulence, they gave him a finished education. 
He studied with great diligence the Bible and the Talmud, but 
soon exchanged the pursuit of theology for the study of physics 
and the works of Descartes. He early became dissatisfied with 
Judaism, and presently came to an open rupture with it, though 
without going over formally to Christianity. In order to escape 
the persecutions of the Jews, who had excommunicated him, and 
who even went so far as to make an attempt upon his life, he left 
Amsterdam and betook himself to Rhynsberg, near Leyden. He 
finally settled down at the Hague, where he spent his life in the 
greatest seclusion, devoted wholly to scientific pursuits. He sup- 
ported himself by grinding optic glasses, which his friends sold 
for him. The Elector Palatine, Charles Louis, offered him a Pro- 
fessorship of Philosophy at Heidelberg, with the full permission 
to teach as he chose, but Spinoza declined the post. Naturally 



SPINOZA. 185 

of a weak constitution, wliicli consumption had for many years 
been undermining, Spinoza died at the age of 44, on the 21st of 
February, 1677. In his life there was mirrored the unclouded 
clearness and exalted serenity of the perfected sage. Abste- 
mious in his habits, satisfied with little, the master of his passions, 
never intemperately sad nor joyous, gentle and benevolent, with a 
character of singular excellence and purity, he faithfully illustra- 
ted in his life, the doctrines of his philosophy. His chief work, 
the Ethica^ appeared the year of his death. His design was pro- 
bably to have published it during his life, but the odious report 
that he was an atheist restrained him. The friend he most trusted, 
Louis Mayer, a physician, attended to its publication after the 
author's death and according to his will. 

The system of Spinoza rests upon three fundamental concep- 
tions, from which all the rest may be derived with mathematical 
necessity. These conceptions are that of substance, of attribute, 
and of mode. 

1. Spinoza starts from the Cartesian conception of substance : 
substance is that which needs nothing other for its existence. 
But with such a conception there can exist only one single sub- 
stance. A number of substances like that of Descartes is neces- 
sarily a contradiction. There can be nothing which has a sub- 
stantial being besides the one substance of all things. This one 
substance Spinoza calls God. Of course, with such a view, the 
Christian idea of God, the notion of a spiritual and personal 
being, must be laid aside. Spinoza expressly declares, that his 
notion of God is entirely different from that of the Christian ; he 
denied that understanding and will could be predicated of God ; 
he ridiculed those who supposed that God worked for an end, 
and even scorned the view which regarded the world as a product 
of the Divine willing or thinking. God is, with him, only sub- 
stance, and nothing more. The propositions that there is only 
one God, and that the substance of all things is only one, are 
with him identical. 

What now peculiarly is this substance ? What is positive 
being ? This question it is very difficult to answer directly from 



186 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the stand-point of Spinoza, partly because a definition, according 
to him, must contain {i. e. must be genetically) the immediate 
cause of that which is to be explained, but substance is uncreated 
and can have no cause besides itself; but prominently because 
Spinoza held that every determination is a negation, since it must 
indicate a want of existence, a relative not-being. (Omnis deter- 
Qjiinatio est negatio is an expression which, though he uses it 
only occasionally, expresses the fundamental idea of his whole 
system.) Hence, by setting up any positive determinations of 
being, we only take away from substance its infinity and make it 
finite. When we therefore affirm any thing concerniDg it, we 
can only speak negatively, e. g. that it has no foreign cause, that 
it has no plurality, that it cannot be divided, etc. It is even 
reluctantly that Spinoza declares concerning it that it is one, for 
this predicate might readily be taken numerically, as implying 
that others, the many, stood over against it. Thus there can 
remain only such positive affirmations respecting it as express its 
absolute reference to itself In this sense Spinoza says that sub- 
stance is the cause of itself, i. e. its being concludes existence in 
itself. When Spinoza calls it eternal, it is only another expression 
for the same thought ; for by eternity he understands existence 
itself, so far as it is conceived to follow from the definition of the 
thing, in a sense similar to that in which geometricians speak of 
the eternal properties of figures. Still farther he calls substance 
infinite, because the conception of infinity expressed to him the 
conception of true being, the absolute affirmation of existence. 
So also the expression, God is free, affirms nothing more than 
those already mentioned, viz., negatively, that every foreign re- 
straint is excluded from him, and positively, that God is in har- 
mony with himself, that his being corresponds to the laws of his 
essence. 

The comprehensive statement for the above is, that there is 
only one infinite substance that excludes from itself all determi- 
nation and negation, and is named God, or nature. 

2. Besides the infinite substance or God, Descartes had as- 
sumed two other substances created by God, viz., mind (thought), 



f 



SPINOZA. 187 

and matter (extension). These two Spinoza considers in the light 
of attributes, though, like Descartes, he receives them empirically. 
What, now, is the relation of these attributes to the infinite sub- 
stance ? This is the severe question, the tendon-Achilles of Spi- 
noza's system. They cannot be essential forms in which the sub- 
stance may manifest itself or appear, for this would make them 
determine the essence of the substance, which would contradict its 
conception as already given. Substance, as such, is neither un- 
derstanding nor extension. If, then, the two attributes do not 
flow out of the essence of the substance, and do not constitute 
the substance, there remains only one other supposition, viz., that 
they are externally attached to the substance ; and this is, in 
fact, Spinoza's view. Attribute, according to him, is that which 
the understanding perceives in the substance as constituting its 
essence. But understanding, as Spinoza expressly says, does not 
belong to substance as such. Attributes, therefore, are those de- 
terminations which express the essence of the substance only for 
the perceiving understanding ; since they express the essence of 
the substance in a determinate way, while substance itself has no 
determinate way of being, they can only fall outside the substance, 
viz., in the reflective understanding. To the substance itself it is 
indifi'erent whether the understanding contemplate it under these 
two attributes or not ; the substance in itself has an infinity of 
attributes, i. e. every possible attribute which is not a limitation, 
may be predicated of it; it is only the human understanding 
which attaches these two attributes to the substance, and it affixes 
no more than these, because, among all the conceptions it can 
form, these alone are actually positive, or express a reality. God, 
or the substance, is therefore thinking, in so far as the under- 
standing contemplates him under the attribute of thought, and is 
extended in so far as the understanding contemplates him under 
the attribute of extension. It is, says Spinoza — using a figure to 
express this relation of substance to attribute — it is, like a surface 
reflecting the light, which (objectively taken) may be hot, though, 
in reference to the man looking upon it, it is white. More accu- 
rately substance is a surface, standing opposite to a beholder who 



188 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



J 



can see only through yellow and blue glasses ; to whom, therefore, 
the surface must appear either yellow or blue, though it is neither 
the one nor the other. 

In relation to substance, therefore, the attributes must be 
apprehended as entirely independent : they must be conceived 
through themselves : their conception is not dependent upon that 
of substance. This is necessarily true; for since the substance 
can have no determinateness, then the attribute which is its deter- 
minate being, cannot be explained from the substance, but only 
through itself. Only by apprehending the attribute independently 
can the unity of the substance be maintained. 

In relation to each other, the attributes are to be taken as 
ojDposites strictly and determinately diverse. Between the bodily 
and the ideal world there is no reciprocal influence nor interac- 
tion : a body can only spring from a body, and an idea can only 
have an idea for its source. Hence, therefore, neither the mind 
can work upon the body nor the body upon the mind. Neverthe- 
less there exists between the two worlds a perfect harmony and 
an entire parallelism. It is one and the same substance which is 
conceived under each of the two attributes, and under which one 
of the two we may contemplate it is indifferent to the substance 
itself, for each mode of contemplation is equally correct. From 
this follows at once the proposition of Spinoza, that the connec- 
tion of ideas and of things is the same. Hence the solution to 
the problem of the relation of body and soul, so difficult to find 
from the Cartesian stand-point, is readily seen from that of Spi- 
noza. Body and soul are one and the same thing, only viewed 
under different attributes. Mind is nothing but the idea of body, 
i. e. it is the same thing as body, only that it is viewed under the 
attribute of thought. In the same way is explained the apparent 
but not real influence of the body upon the mind, and the mind 
upon the body. That which, in one point of view is bodily mo- 
tion, in another is an act of thought. In short, the most perfect 
parallelism reigns between the world of bodily things and that of 
ideas. 

3. Individual beings, which considered under the attribute of 



SPINOZA. 189 

thought are ideas, and under the attribute of extension are 
bodies, Spinoza comprehends under the conception of accidence, 
or, as he calls it, mode. By modes we are therefore to under- 
stand the changing forms of substance. The modes stand related 
to the substance as the rippling waves of the sea to the water of 
the sea, as forms constantly disappearing and never having a real 
being. In fact this example goes too far, for the waves of the 
sea are at least a part of the water of the sea, while the modes, 
instead of being parts of the substance, are essentially nothing and 
without being. The finite has no existence as finite ; only the 
infinite substance has actual existence. Substance, therefore, 
could not be regarded more falsely than if it should be viewed as 
made up of modes. That would be, Spinoza remarks, as if one 
should say that the line is made up out of points. It is just as 
false to affirm that Spinoza identifies God and the world. He 
identifies them so little that he would rather say that the world, 
as world, i. e. as an aggregate of individuals, does not at all 
exist ; we might rather say with Hegel that he denies the world 
(his system is an acosmism), than with Bayle, that he makes every 
thing God, or that he ascribes divinity to every thing. 

Whence do finite things or individuals arise, if they can have 
no existence by the side of substance ? They are only the product 
of our deceptive apprehension. There are two chief ways of know- 
ledge — the intuitive, through the reason, and the imaginative. 
To the latter belong the knowledge of experience, and all that is 
abstract, superficial, and confused ; to the former, the collection 
of all fitting (adequate) ideas. It is only the fault of the imagi- 
nation that we should look upon the world as a manifoldness of 
individuals ; the manifoldness is only a form of representation. 
The imagination isolates and individualizes what the reason sees 
together in its unity. Hence it is only as considered through the 
imagination (experience or opinion) that modes sly e things ; the 
reason looks upon them as necessary, or, what is the same thing, 
as eternal. 

Such are the fundamental thoughts and features of Spinoza's 
system. His practical philosophy yet remains to be characterized 



190 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and in a few words. Its chief propositions follow necessarily 
from the metaphysical grounds already cited. First, it follows 
from these, that what is called free will cannot be admitted. For 
since man is only a mode, he, like every other mode, stands in an 
endless series of conditioning causes, and no free will can there- 
fore be predicated of him. The will must thus, like the body 
(and the resolution of the will is only a modification of the body), 
be determined by something other than itself Men regard them- 
selves as free only because they are conscious of their actions and 
not of the determining causes. Just so the notions which one 
commonly connects with the words good and evil, rest on an error 
as follows at once from the conception of the absolute divine 
causality. Good and evil are not something actually in the things 
themselves, but only express relative conceptions which we have 
formed from a comparison of things with one another. Thus, by 
observing certain things we form a certain universal conception, 
which we thereupon treat as though it were the rule for the being 
and acting of all individuals, and if any individual varies from 
this conception we fancy that it does not correspond to its nature, 
and is incomplete. Evil or sin is therefore only something rela- 
tive, for nothing happens against God's will. It is only a simple 
negation or deprivation, which only seems to be a reality in our 
representation. With God there is no idea of the evil. What is 
therefore good and what evil ? That is good which is useful to 
us, and that evil which hinders us from partaking of a good. 
That, moreover, is useful to us which brings us to a greater reality, 
which preserves and exalts our being. But our true being is 
knowledge, and hence that only is useful to us which aids us in 
knowing ; the highest good is the knowledge of God ; the highest 
virtue of the mind is to know and love God. From the know- 
ledge of God we gain the highest gladness and joy of the mind, 
the highest blessedness. Blessedness, hence, is not the reward of 
virtue, but virtue itself 

The grand feature of Spinoza's philosophy is that it buries 
every thing individual and particular, as a finite, in the abyss of 
the divine substance. With its view unalterably fixed upon the 



SPINOZA. 191 

eternal one, it loses sight of every thing which seems actual in 
the ordinary notions of men. But its defect consists in its ina- 
bility to transform this negative abyss of substance into the posi- 
tive ground of all-being and becoming. The substance of Spi- 
noza has been justly compared to the lair of a lion, which many 
footsteps enter, but from which none emerge. The existence of 
the phenomenal world, though it be only the apparent and decep- 
tive reality of the finite, Spinoza does not explain. With his 
abstract conception of substance he cannot explain it. And yet 
the means to help him out of the difficulty lay near at hand. He 
failed to apply imiversally his fundamental principle that all de- 
termination is negation ; he applied it only to the finite, but the 
abstract infinite, in so far as it stands over against the finite, is 
also a determinate ; this infinite must be denied by its negation, 
which is the case when a finite world is posited, Jacob Boehme 
rightly apprehended this, when he affirmed, that without a self- 
duplication, without an ingress into the limited, the finite, the 
original ground of things is an empty nothing {cf, ^ XXIII. 8). 
So the original ground of Spinoza is a nothing, a purely indeter- 
minate, because with him substance was only a principle of unity 
and not also a principle of distinction, because its attributes, in- 
stead of being an expression of an actual difference and a positive 
distinction to itself, are rather wholly indifferent to itself. The 
system of Spinoza is the most abstract Monotheism that can be 
thought. It is not accidental that its author, a Jew, should have 
brought out again this view of the world, this view of absolute 
identity, for it is in a certain degree with him only a consequence 
of his national religion — an echo of the Orient. 



192 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



SECTION XXVII. 



IDEALISM AND KEALISM. 



We have now reached a point of divergence in the develop- 
ment of philosophy. Descartes had affirmed and attempted to 
mediate the opposition, between thought and being, mind and 
matter. This mediation, however, was hardly successful, for the 
two sides of the opposition he had fixed in their widest separa- 
tion, when he posited them as two substances or powers, which 
reciprocally negated each other. The followers of Descartes 
sought a more satisfactory mediation, but the theories to which 
they saw themselves driven, only indicated the more clearly that 
the whole premise from which they started must be given up. 
At length Spinoza abandoned the false notion, and took away its 
substantiality from each of the two opposed principles. Mind 
and matter, thought and extension, are now one in the infinite 
substance. Yet they are not one in themselves^ which would be 
the only true unity of the two. That they are one in the sub- 
stance is of little avail, since they are indifferent to the substance, 
and are not immanent distinctions in it. Thus even with Spinoza 
the two remain strictly separate. The ground of this isolation 
we find in the fact that Spinoza himself did not sufficiently re- 
nounce the Cartesian notion, and thus could not escape the Car- 
tesian dualism. With him, as with Descartes, thought is only 
thought, and extension only extension, and in such an apprehen- 
sion of the two, the one necessarily excludes the other. If we 
would find an inner mediation for the two, we must cease to ab- 
stract every thing essential from each. The opposite sides must 
be mediated even in their strictest opposition. To do this, two 
ways alone were possible. A position could be taken either on 
the material or on the ideal side, and the attempt made to explain 
the ideal under the material, or the material under the ideal, 
comprehending one through the other. Both these attempts were 



LOCKE. 193 

in fact made, and at about the same time. The two parallel 
courses of a one-sided idealism, and a one-sided realism (Empi- 
ricism, Sensualism, Materialism), now begin their development. 



SECTION XXVIII. 



LOCKE. 



The founder of the realistic course and the father of modern 
Empiricism and Materialism, is John Locke, an Englishman. 
Thomas Hohhes (1588-1679) was his predecessor and countryman, 
whose name we need here only mention, as it has no importance 
except for the history of natural rights. 

John Locke was born at Wrington, 1632. His student years 
he devoted to philosophy and prominently to medicine, though his 
weak health prevented him from practising as a physician. Few 
cares of business interrupted his leisure, and he devoted his time 
mostly to literary pursuits. His friendly relations with Lord 
Anthony Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, exerted a 
weighty influence upon his course in life. At the house of this 
distinguished statesman and author he always found the most 
cordial reception, and an intercourse with the most important 
men of England. In the year 1670 he sketched for a number of 
friends the first plan of his famous Essay on the Human Under- 
standing, though the completed work did not appear till 1689. 
Locke died aged 72 in the year 1704. His writings are charac- 
terized by clearness and precision, openness and determinateness. 
More acute than profound in his philosophizing, he does not in 
this respect belie the characteristic of his nation. The funda- 
mental thoughts and results of his philosophy have now become 
common property, especially among the English, though it should 
not therefore be forgotten that he is the first who has scientifically 
established them, and is, on this account, entitled to a true place 
9 



194 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in the history of philosophy, even though his principle was want- 
ing in an inner capacity for development. 

Locke's Philosophy {i. e, his theory of knowledge, for his 
whole philosophizing expends itself in investigating the faculty of 
knowing) rests upon two thoughts, to which he never ceases to re- 
vert : first (negatively), there are no innate ideas; second (posi- 
tively), all our knowledge arises from experience. 

Many, says Locke, suppose that there are innate ideas which 
the soul receives coetaneous with its origin, and brings with it into 
the world. In order to prove that these ideas are innate, it is 
said that they universally exist, and are universally valid with 
all men. But admitting that this were so, such a fact would 
prove nothing if this universal harmony could be explained in 
any other way. But men mistake when they claim such a fact. 
There is, in reality, no fundamental proposition, theoretical or 
practical, which would be universally admitted. Certainly there 
is no such practical principle, for the example of different people 
as well as of different ages shows that there is no moral rule uni- 
versally admitted as valid. Neither is there a theoretical one, 
for even those propositions which might lay the strongest claim 
to be universally valid, e. g, the proposition, — '^ what is, is," or — 
"it is imposible that one and the same thing should be and 
not be at the same time," — receive by no means a universal assent. 
Children and idiots have no notion of these principles, and even 
uncultivated men know nothing of these abstract propositions. 
They cannot therefore have been imprinted on all men by nature. 
If ideas were innate, then they must be known by all from earliest 
childhood. For '' to be in the understanding," and " to become 
known," is one and the same thing. The assertion therefore that 
these ideas are imprinted on the understanding while it does not 
know it, is hence a manifest contradiction. Just as little is gained 
by the subterfuge, that these principles come into the conscious- 
ness so soon as men use their reason. This affirmation is direct- 
ly false, for these maxims which are called universal come into the 
consciousness much later than a great deal of other knowledge, 
and children, e, g. give many proofs of their use of reason before 



LOCKE. 195 

they know that it is impossible that a thing should be and at the 
same time not be. It is only correct to say that no one becomes 
conscious of these propositions without reasoning, — but to say 
that they are all known with the first reasoning is false. More- 
over, that which is first known is not universal propositions, but 
relates to individual impressions. The child knows that sweet 
is not bitter long before he understands the logical proposition of 
contradiction. He who carefully bethinks himself, will hesitate 
before he affirms that particular dicta as ^' sweet is not bitter," are 
derived from universal ones. If the universal propositions were 
innate, then must they be the first in the consciousness of the 
child ; for that which nature has stamped upon the human soul 
must come into consciousness antecedently to any thing which 
she has not written there. Consequently, if there are no innate 
ideas, either theoretical or practical, there can be just as 
truly no innate art nor science. The understanding (or the soul) 
is essentially a iabula rasa^ — a blank and void space, a white 
paper on which nothing is written. 

How now does the understanding become possessed of ideas ? 
Only through experience, upon which all knowledge rests, and on 
which as its principle all knowledge depends. Experience itself 
is twofold ; either it arises through the perception of external ob- 
jects by means of the sense, in which case we call it sensation ; 
or it is a perception of the activities of our own understanding, in 
which case it is named the inner sense, or, better, reflection. 
Sensation and reflection give to the understanding all its ideas ; 
they are the windows through which alone the light of ideas falls 
upon the naturally dark space of the mind; external objects fur- 
nish us with the ideas of sensible qualities, and the inner object, 
which is the understanding itself, off'ers us the ideas of its own 
activities. To show the derivation and to give an explanation of 
all the ideas derived from both is the problem of the Lockian phi- 
losophy. For this end Locke divides ideas (representations or 
notions) into simple and compound. Simple ideas, he names those 
which are impressed from without upon the understanding while 
it remains wholly passive, just as the images of certain objects are 



196 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

represented in a mirror. These simple ideas are partly such as 
come to the understanding through an individual sense, e. g. the 
ideas of color, which are furnished to the mind through the eye, 
or those of sound, which come to it through the ear, or those of 
solidity or impenetrability, which we receive through the touch ; 
partly such as a number of senses have combined to give us, as 
those of space and of motion, of which we become conscious by 
means of the sense both of touch and of sight ; partly such as we 
receive through reflection, as the idea of thought and of will; and 
partly^ in fine, such as arise from both sensation and reflection 
combined, e. g. power, unity, &c. These simple ideas form the 
material, as it were the letters of all our knowledge. But now as 
language arises from a manifold combination of letters, syllables 
and words, so the understanding forms complex ideas by the mani- 
fold combination of simple ideas with each other. The complex 
ideas may be referred to three classes, viz. : the ideas of mode, of 
substance, and of relation. Under the ideas of mode, Locke con- 
isiders the modifications of space (as distance, measurement, im- 
mensity, surface, figure, &c.), of time (as succession, duration, 
eternity), of thought (perception, memory, abstraction, &c.), of 
number, power, &c. Special attention is given by Locke to the 
conception of substance. He explains the origin of this concep- 
tion in this way, viz. : we find both in sensation and reflection, 
that a certain number of simple ideas seem often to be connected 
together. But as we cannot divest ourselves of the impression 
that these simple ideas have not been produced through them- 
selves, we are accustomed to furnish them with a ground in some 
existing substratum, which we indicate with the word substance. 
Substance is something unknown, and is conceived of as possessing 
those qualities which are necessary to furnish us with simple ideas* 
But from the fact that substance is a product of our subjective 
thinking, it does not follow that it has no existence outside of our- 
selves. On the contrary, this is distinguished from all other com- 
plex ideas in the fact that this is an idea which has its archetype 
distinct from ourselves, and possesses objective reality, while other 
complex ideas are formed by the mind at pleasure, and have no 



II 



LOCKE. 197 

reality corresponding to them external to tlie mind. "We do not 
know what is the archetype of substance, and of the substance 
itself we are acquainted only with its attributes. From consider- 
ing the conception of substance, Locke next passes over to the idea 
of relation. A relation arises when the understanding has con- 
nected two things with each other, in such a way, that in consider- 
ing them it passes over from the one to the other. Every thing 
is capable of being brought by the understanding into relation, or 
what is the same thing, to be transformed into something relative. 
It is consequently impossible to enumerate the sum of every pos- 
sible relation. Hence Locke treats only of some of the more 
weighty conceptions of relation, among others, that of identity and 
difference, but especially that of cause and effect. The idea of 
cause and effect arises when our understanding perceives that any 
thing whatsoever, be it substance or quality, begins to exist 
through the activity of another. So much concerning ideas. The 
combination of ideas among themselves gives the conception of 
knowing. Hence knowledge stands in the same relation to the 
simple and complex ideas as a proposition does to the letters, syl- 
lables and words which compose it. From this it follows that our 
knowledge does not pass beyond the compass of our ideas, and 
hence that it is bounded by experience. 

These are the prominent thoughts in the Lockian philosophy. 
Its empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in 
itself bare, and only a mirror of the outer world, — a dark space 
which passively receives the images of external objects ; its whole 
content is made by the impressions furnished it by material things. 
Nihil est in intellectu^ quod non fuerit in sensu — is the watch- 
word of this standpoint. While Locke, by this proposition, ex- 
presses the undoubted preponderance of the material over the 
intellectual, he does so still more decisively when he declares that 
it is possible and even probable that the mind is a material essence. 
He does not admit the reverse possibility, that material things 
may be classed under the intellectual as a special kind. Hence 
with him mind is the secondary to matter, and hence he is seen to 
take the characteristic standpoint of realism {cf. § XXVII). 



198 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and in 
many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism : but Ave 
can clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther 
development of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of 
the ideal factor. 

The empiricism of Locke, wholly national as it is, soon be- 
came the ruling philosophy in England. Standing on its basis 
we find Isaac Newton^ the great mathematician (1642-1727), 
Samuel Clarke^ a disciple of Newton, whose chief attention was 
,given to moral philosophy (1675-1729), the English moralists of 
this period, William Wollasion (1659-1724), the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury (1671-1713), Francis Eutcheson (1694-1746), and even 
some opponents of Locke, as Peter Brown^ who died 1735. 



SECTION XXIX. 

HUME. 

As already remarked, Locke had not been wholly consistent 
with the standpoint of empiricism. Though conceding to ma- 
terial objects a decided superiority above the thinking subject, 
there was yet one point, viz., the recognition of substance, where 
he claimed for the thinking a power above the objective world. 
Among all the complex ideas which are formed by the subjective 
thinking, the idea of substance is, according to Locke, the only 
one which has objective reality ; all the rest being purely sub- 
jective, with nothing actually corresponding to them in the ob- 
jective world. But in the very fact that the subjective thinking 
places the conception of substance, which it has formed, in the 
objective world, it affirms an objective relation of things, an ob- 
jective connection of them among each other, and an existing 
rationality. The reason of the subject in this respect stands in a 
certain degree above the objective world, for the relation of sub- 
stance is not derived immediately from the world of sense, and is 



HUME. 199 

no product of sensation nor of perception through the sense. On 
a pure empirical standpoint — and such was Locke's — it was 
therefore illogical to allow the conception of substance to remain 
possessed of objective being. If the understanding is essentially 
a bare and empty space, a white unwritten paper, if its whole con- 
tent of objective knowledge consists in the impressions made upon 
it by material things, then must the conception of substance also 
be explained as a mere subjective notion, a union of ideas joined 
together at the mind's pleasure, and the subject itself, thus fully 
deprived of every thing to which it could lay claim, .nust become 
wholly subordinated to the material world. This stride to a 
logical empiricism Hume has made in his criticism on the concep- 
tion of causality. 

David Hume was born at Edinburgh 1711. Devoted in youth 
to the study of law, then for some time a merchant, he afterwards 
gave his attention exclusively to philosophy and history. His first 
literary attempt was hardly noticed. A more favorable reception 
was, however, given to his ^^ Essay s^^'' — of which he published 
different collections from 1742 to 1757, making in all five vol- 
um-es. In these Hume has treated philosophical themes as a 
thoughtful and cultivated man of the world, but without any strict 
systematic connection. In 1752 he was elected to the care of a 
public library in Edinburgh, and began in this same year his 
famous history of England. Afterwards he became secretary of 
legation at Paris, where he became acquainted with Eousseau. 
In 1767 he became under secretary of state, an office, however, 
which he filled for only a brief period. His last years were spent 
in Edinburgh, in a quiet and contented seclusion. He died 
1776. 

The centre of Hume's philosophizing is his criticism of the 
conception of cause. Locke had already expressed the thought 
that we attain the conception of substance only by the Jiahit of 
always seeing certain modes together. Hume takes up this 
thought with earnestness. Whence do we know, he asks, that 
two things stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect ? 
We do not know it apriori, for since the effect is something other 



200 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

than the cause, while knowledge apriori embraces only that which 
is identical, the effect cannot thus be discovered in the cause ; 
neither do we know it through experience, for experience reveals 
to us only the succession in time of two facts. All our conclu- 
sions from experience, therefore, rest simply upon habit. Be- 
cause we are in the habit of seeing that one thing is followed in 
time by another, do we form the notion that the latter must fol- 
low out of the former : we make the relation of causality out of 
the relation of succession ; but a connection in time is naturally 
something other than a causal connection. Hence, with the con- 
ception of causality, we transcend that which is given in percep- 
tion and form for ourselves, notions to which we are properly not 
entitled. — That which belongs to causality belongs to every neces- 
sary relation. We find within us conceptions, as those of power 
and expression, and in general that of necessary connection ; but 
let us note how we attain these : not through sensation, for 
though external objects seem to us to have coetaneousness of 
being, they show us no necessary connection. Do they then come 
through reflection ? True, it seems as if we might get the idea 
of power by seeing that the organs of our body move in conse- 
quence of the dictate of our mind. But since we do not know 
the means through which the mind works, and since all the or- 
gans of the body cannot be moved by the will, it follows, that we 
are indeed pointed to experience in reference to this activity ; but 
since experience can show us only a frequent conjunction, but no 
real connection, it follows also that we come to the conception of 
power as of every necessary connection, only because we are ac- 
customed to a transcending process in our notions. All concep- 
tions which express a relation of necessity, all knowledge pre- 
sumptive of a real objective connection of things, rests therefore 
ultimately only upon the association of ideas. Having denied 
the conception of substance, Hume was led also to deny that of 
the Ego or self If the Ego or self really exists, it must be a 
substance possessing inherent qualities. But since our concep- 
tion of substance is purely subjective, without objective reality, 
it follows that there is no correspondent reality to our conception 



CONDILLAC. 201 

of the self or tlie Ego. The self or the Ego is, in fact, nothing 
other than a compound of many notions following rapidly upon 
each other ; and under this compound we lay a conceived sub- 
stratum, which we call soul, self, Ego (I). The self, or the Ego, 
rests wholly on an illusion. Of course, with such premises, 
nothing can be said of the immortality of the soul. If the soul 
is only the compound of our notions, it necessarily ceases with 
the notions — that which is compounded of the movements of the 
body dies with those movements. 

There needs no further proof, than simply to itter these chief 
thoughts of Hume, to show that his scepticism is only a logical 
carrying out of Locke's empiricism. Every determination of 
universality and necessity must fall away, if we derive our knowl- 
edge only from perceptions through the sense ; these determina- 
tions cannot be comprised in sensation. 



SECTION XXX. 

CONDILLAC. 

The French took up the problem of carrying out the empiri- 
cism of Locke, to its ultimate consequences in sensualism and 
materialism. Although this empiricism had sprung up on English 
soil, and had soon become universally prevalent there, it was re- 
served for France to push it to the last extreme, and show that it 
overthrew all the foundations of moral and religious life. This 
final consequence of empiricism did not correspond to the English 
national character. But on the contrary, both the empiricism of 
Locke, and the scepticism of Hume, found themselves opposed 
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, by a reaction in the 
Scotch philosophy {Beid 1701-1799, Beattie, Oswald, Dugald 
Stewart, 1753-1828). The attempt was here made to establish 
certain principles of truth as innate and immanent in the sub- 
ject, which should avail both against the tahula rasa of Locke, 
9* 



202 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and the scepticism of Hume. These principles were taken in a 
thoroughly English way, as those of common sense, as facts of 
experience, as facts of the moral instinpt and sound human un- 
derstanding; as something empirically given, and found in the 
common consciousness by self-contemplation and reflection. But 
in France, on the other hand, there was such a public and social 
condition of things during the eighteenth century, that we can 
only regard the systems of materialism and egoistic moralism 
which here appeared, as the last practical consequences of the 
empirical standpoint, — to be the natural result of the universal 
desolation. The expression of a lady respecting the system of 
Helvetius is well known, that it uttered only the secret of all the 
world. 

Most closely connected with the empiricism of Locke, is the 
sensualism of the Abbe Condillac. Condillac was born at Gre- 
noble, 1715. In his first writings he adhered to Locke, but sub- 
sequently passed beyond him, and sought to ground a philosophi- 
cal standpoint of his own. He was elected a member of the 
French Academy in 1768, and died in 1780. His writings fill 
twenty-three volumes, and have their origin in a moral and re- 
ligious interest. 

Condillac, like Locke, started with the proposition that all 
our knowledge comes from experience. While, however, Locke 
had indicated two sources for this knowledge, sensation and re- 
flection, the outer and the inner sense, Condillac referred reflec- 
tion to sensation, and reduced the two sources to one. Reflection 
is, with him, only sensation ; all intellectual occurrences, even the 
combination of ideas and volition, are to be regarded only as 
modified sensations. It is the chief problem and contefit of Con- 
dillac's philosophizing to carry out this thought, and derive the 
different functions of the soul out of the sensations of the outer 
sense. He illustrates this thought by a statue, which has been 
made with a perfect internal organization like a man, but which 
possesses no ideas, and in which only gradually one sense after 
another awakens and fills the soul with impressions. In such a 
view man stands on the same footing as the brute, for all his 






HELVETIUS. 203 

knowledge and all his incentives to action he receives from sen- 
sation. Condillac consequently names men perfect animals, and 
brutes imperfect men. Still he revolts from affirming the mate- 
riality of the soul, and denying the existence of God. These 
ultimate consequences of sensualism were first drawn by others 
after him, as would naturally enough follow. As sensualism 
affirmed that truth or being could only be perceived through the 
sense, so we have only to reverse this proposition, and have the 
thesis of materialism, viz. : the sensible alone is, there is no other 
being but material being. 



SECTION XXXI. 

HELVETIUS. 

Helvetius has exhibited the moral consequences of the sen- 
sualistic standpoint. While theoretical sensualism affirms that 
all our knowledge is determined by sensation, practical sensualism 
adds to this the analogous proposition that all our volition springs 
from the same source, and is regulated by the sensuous desire. 
Helvetius adopted it as the principle of morals to satisfy this 
sensuous desire. 

Helvetius was born at Paris in 1715. Gaining a position in 
his twenty-third year as farmer-general, he found himself early in 
the possession of a rich income, but after a few years he found 
this office so vexatious that he abandoned it. The study of 
Locke decided his philosophic direction. Helvetius wrote his 
famed work, de V Esprit^ after he had given up his office and 
withdrawn himself in seclusion. It appeared in 1758, and at- 
tracted a great attention at home and abroad, though it drew 
upon him a violent' persecution, especially from the clergy. It 
was fortunate for him that the persecution satisfied itself with 
suppressing his book. The repose in which he spent his later 
years was interrupted only by two journeys which he made to 



204 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Germany and England. He died in 1771. His personal char- 
acter was wholly estimable, full of kindness and generosity. Es- 
pecially in his place as farmer-general he showed himself benev- 
olent towards the poor, and resolute against the encroachments 
of his subalterns. The style of his writings is easy and 
elegant. 

Self-love or interest, says Helvetius, is the lever of all our 
mental activities. Even that activity which is purely intellectual, 
our instinct towards knowledge, our forming of ideas, rests upon 
this. Since now all self-love refers essentially only to bodily 
pleasure, it follows that every mental occurrence within us has its 
peculiar source only in the striving after this pleasure ; but in 
saying this, we have only affirmed where the principle of all mo- 
rality is to be sought. It is an absurdity to require a man to do 
the good simply for its own sake. This is just as impracticable 
as that he should do the evil simply for the sake of the evil. 
Hence if morality would not be wholly fruitless, it must return 
to its empirical basis, and venture to adopt the true principle of 
all acting, viz., sensuous pleasure and pain, or, in other words, self- 
ishness as an actual moral principle. Hence, as a correct legis- 
lation is that which secures obedience to its laws through reward 
and punishment, i. e, through selfishness, so will a correct system 
of morals be that which derives the duties of men from self-love, 
which shows that that which is forbidden is something which is 
followed by disagreeable consequences. A system of ethics which 
does not involve the self-interest of men, or which wars against 
this, necessarily remains fruitless. 



THE FRENCH CLEARING UP. 205 



SECTION XXXII. 

THE FRENCH CLEARING UP {AufMaeTUng) AND MATE- 
RIALISM. 

1. It has already been remarked (^ XXX.) that the carrying 
out of empiricism to its extremes, as was attempted in France, 
was most intimately connected with the general condition of the 
French people and state, in the period before the revolution. The 
contradictory element in the character of the Middle Ages, the 
external and dualistic relation to the spiritual world, had developed 
itself in Catholic France till it had corrupted and destroyed every 
condition. Morality, mainly through the influence of a licentious 
court, had become wholly corrupted ; the state had sunk to an 
unbridled despotism, and the church to a hierarchy as hypocritical 
as it was powerful. Thus, as every intellectual edifice was threat- 
ened with ruin, nature, as matter without intellect, as the object 
of sensation and desire, alone remained. Yet it is not the ma- 
terialistic extreme which constitutes the peculiar character and 
tendency of the period now before us. The common character of 
the philosophers of the eighteenth century is rather, and most 
prominently, the opposition against every ruling restraint, and 
perversion in morals, religion, and the state. Their criticism and 
polemics, which were much more ingenious and eloquent than 
strictly scientific, were directed against the whole realm of tra- 
ditional and given and positive notions. They sought to show 
the contradiction between the existing elements in the state and 
the church, and the incontrovertible demands of the reason. They 
sought to overthrow in the faith of the world every fixed opinion 
which had not been established in the eye of reason, and to give 
the thinking man the full consciousness of his pure freedom. In 
order that we may correctly estimate the merit of these men, we 
must bring before us the French world of that age against which 
their attacks were directed ; the dissoluteness of a pitiful court, 



206 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the slavish obedience exacted by a corrupt priesthood, a church 
sunken into decay yet seeking worldly honor, a state constitution, 
a condition of rights and of society, which must be profoundly 
revolting to every thinking man and every moral feeling. It is 
the immortal merit of these men that they gave over to scorn and 
hatred the abjectness and hypocrisy which then reigned ; that 
they brought the minds of men to look with indifference upon the 
idols of the world, and awakened within them a consciousness of 
their own autonomy. 

2. The most famoUs and influential actor in this period of the 
French clearing up, is Voltaire (1694-1778). Though a writer 
of great versatility, rather than a philosopher, there was yet no 
philosopher of that time who exerted so powerful an influence 
upon the whole thinking of his country and his age. Voltaire 
was no atheist. On the contrary, he regarded the belief in a 
Supreme Being to be so necessary, that he once said that if there 
were no God we should be under the necessity of inventing one. 
He was just as little disposed to deny the immortality of the soul, 
though he often expressed his doubts upon it. He regarded the 
atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie as nothing but nonsense. In 
these respects, therefore, he is far removed from the standpoint of 
the philosophers who followed him. His whole hatred was expend- 
ed against Christianity as a positive religion. To destroy this 
system he considered as his peculiar mission, and he left no means 
untried to attain this anxiously longed-for end. His unwearied 
warfare against every positive religion prepared the way and gave 
weapons for the attacks against spiritualism which followed. 

3. The Encyclopedists had a more decidedly sceptical relation 
to the principles and the basis of spiritualism. The philosophical 
Encyclopedia established hj Diderot (1713-1784), and published by 
him in connection with d'Alembert, is a memorable monument of 
the ruling spirit in France in the time before the revolution. It 
was the pride of France at that age, because it expressed in a 
splendid and universally accessible form the inner consciousness 
of the French people. With the keenest wit it reasoned away 
law from the state, and freedom from morality, and spirit and 



THE FRENCH CLEARING UP. 207 

God from nature, thougli all this was done only in scattered, and, 
for tlie most part, timorous intimations. In Diderot's independent 
writings we j&nd talent of much philosophic importance united 
with great earnestness. But it is very difficult to fix and accu- 
rately to limit his philosophic views, since they were very gradually 
formed, and Diderot expressed them always with some reserve 
and accommodation. In general, however, it may be remarked, 
that in the progress of his speculations he constantly approached 
nearer the extreme of the philosophical direction of his <age. In 
his earlier writings a Deist, he afterwards avowed the opinion 
that every thing is God. At first defending the immateriality and 
immortality of the soul, he expressed himself at a later period 
decidedly against these doctrines, affirming that the species alone 
has an abiding being while the individual passes away, and that 
immortality is nothing other than to live in the thoughts of coming 
generations. But Diderot did not venture to the real extreme of 
logical materialism; his moral earnestness restrained him from 
this. 

4. The last word of materialism was spoken with reckless au- 
dacity by La Meitrie (1709 — 1751), a cotemporary of Diderot : 
every thing spiritual is a delusion, and physical enjoyment is the 
highest end of men. Faith in the existence of a God, says La 
Mettrie, is just as groundless as it is fruitless. The world will 
not be happy till atheism becomes universally established. Then 
alone will there be no more religious strife, then alone will theo- 
logians, the most odious of combatants, disappear, and nature, 
poisoned at present by their influence, will come again to its 
rights. In reference to the human soul, there can be no philos- 
ophy but materialism. All the observation and experience of the 
greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing 
but a mere name, which has a rational signification only when we 
understand by it that part of our body which thinks. This is 
the brain, which has its muscles of thought, just as the limbs 
have their muscles of motion. That which gives man his advan- 
tage over the brutes is, first, the organization of his brain, and 
second, its capacity for receiving instruction. Otherwise, is man 



208 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



m 



a brute like the beasts around him, though in many respects sur- 
passed by these. Immortality is an absurdity. The soul per- 
ishes with the body of which it forms a part. With death every 
thing is over, la farce est jouee ! The practical and selfish ap- 
plication of all this is — let us enjoy ourselves as long as we exist, 
and not throw away any satisfaction we can attain. 

5. The SysUme de la Nature afterwards attempted to 
elaborate with greater earnestness and scientific precision, that 
which had been uttered so superficially and so superciliously by 
La Mettrie, viz., the doctrine that matter alone exists, while 
mind is nothing other than matter refined. 

The Systeme de la Nature appeared in London under a ficti- 
tious name in 1770. It was then published as a posthumous 
work of Mirabaud, late secretary of the Academy. It doubtless 
had its origin in the circle which was wont to assemble with 
Baron Holbach, and of which Diderot, Grimm, and others formed 
a part. Whether the Baron Holbach himself, or his tutor La- 
grange is the author of this work, or whether it is the joint pro- 
duction of a number, cannot now be determined. The SyB- 
teme de la Nature is hardly a French book : the style is too 
heavy and tedious. 

There is, in fact, nothing but matter and motion, says this 
work. Both are inseparably connected. If matter is at rest, it 
is only because hindered in motion, for in its essence it is not a 
dead mass. Motion is twofold, attraction and repulsion. The 
different motions which we see are the product of these two, and 
through these diff'erent motions arise the diff*erent connections 
and the whole manifoldne^s of things. The laws which direct in 
all this are eternal and unchangeable. — The most weighty con- 
sequences of such a doctrine are : 

(1.) The materiality of man. Man is no twofold being com- 
pounded of mind and matter, as is erroneously believed. If the 
inquiry is closely made what the mind is, we are answered, that 
the most accurate philosophical investigations have shown, that 
the principle of activity in man is a substance whose peculiar na- 
ture cannot be known, but of which we can affirm that it is in- 



ii 



THE FRENCH CLEARING UP. 209 

divisible, unextended, invisible, &c. But now, who should con- 
ceive any thing determinate in a substance which is only the 
negation of that which gives knowledge, an idea which is pecu- 
liarly only the absence of all ideas ? Still farther, how can it be 
explained upon such a hypothesis, that a substance which itself is 
not material can work upon material things ; and how can it set 
these in motion, since there is no point of contact between the 
two ? In fact, those who distinguish their soul from their body, 
have only to make a distinction between their brain and their 
body. Thought is only a modification of our brain, just as voli- 
tion is another modification of the same bodily organ. 

(2.) Another chimera, the belief in the being of a God, is 
connected with the twofold division of man into body and soul. 
This belief arises like the hypothesis of a soul-substance, because 
mind is falsely divided from matter, and nature is thus made two- 
fold. The evil which men experienced, and whose natural cause 
they could not discover, they assigned to a deity which they 
imagined for the purpose. The first notions of a Grod have their 
source therefore in sorrow, fear, and uncertainty. We tremble 
because our forefathers for thousands of years have done the 
same. This circumstance awakens no auspicious prepossession. 
But not only the rude, but also the theological idea of God is 
worthless, for it explains no phenomenon of nature. It is, more- 
over, full of absurdities, for, since it ascribes moral attributes to 
God, it renders him human ; while on the other hand, by a mass 
of negative attributes, it seeks to distinguish him absolutely from 
every other being. The true system, the system of nature, is 
hence atheistic. But such a doctrine requires a culture and a 
courage which neither all men nor most men possess. If we un- 
derstand by the word atheist one who considers only dead matter, 
or who designates the moving power in nature with the name 
God, then is there no atheist, or whoever would be one is a fool. 
But if the word means one who denies the existence of a spiritual 
being, a being whose attributes can only be a source of annoyance 
to men, then are there indeed atheists, and there would be more 
of them, if a correct knowledge of nature and a sound reason 



210 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

were more widely diffused. But if atheism is true, then should 
it be diffused. There are, indeed, many who have cast off the 
yoke of religion, who nevertheless think it is necessary for the 
common people in order to keep them within proper limits. * But 
this is just as if we should determine to give a man poison lest 
he should abuse his strength. Every kind of Deism leads neces- 
sarily to superstition, since it is not possible to continue on the 
stand-point of pure deism. 

(3.) With such premises the freedom and immortality of the 
soul both disappear. Man, like every other substance in nature, 
is a link in the chain of necessary connection, a blind instrument 
in the hands of necessity. If any thing should be endowed with 
self-motion, that is, with a capacity to produce motion without any 
other cause, then would it have the power to destroy motion in 
the universe ; but this is contrary to the conception of the uni- 
verse, which is only an endless series of necessary motions spread- 
ing out into wider circles continually. The claim of an individual 
immortality is absurd. For to affirm that the soul exists after 
the destruction of the body, is to affirm that a modification of a 
substance can exist after the substance itself has disappeared. 
There is no other immortality than to live in the remembrance of 
posterity. 

(4.) The practical consequences of these principles are in the 
highest degree favorable for the system of nature, the utility of 
any doctrine being ever the first criterion of its truth. While the 
ideas of theologians are productive only of disquiet and anxiety 
to man, the system of nature frees him from all such unrest, 
teaches him to enjoy the present moment, and to quietly yield to 
his destiny, while it gives him that kind of apathy which every 
one must regard as a blessing. If morality would be active, it 
can rest only upon self-love and self-interest ; it must show man 
whither his well-considered interest would lead him. He is a 
good man who gains his own interest in such a way that others 
will find it for their interest to assist him. The system of self- 
interest, therefore, demands the union of men among each other, 
and hence we have true morality. 



LEIBNITZ. 211 

The logical dogmatic materialism of the SysUme de la Nature 
is the farthest limit of an empirical direction in philosophy, and 
consequently closes that course of the development of a one-sided 
realism which had begun with Locke. The attempt first made by 
Locke to explain and derive the ideal world from the material, 
ended in materialism with the total reduction of every thing spir- 
itual to the material, with the total denial of the spiritual. We 
must now, before proceeding farther, according to the classifica- 
tion made § XXVII. , consider the idealistic course of development 
which ran parallel with the systems of a partial realism. At the 
head of this course stands Leibnitz. 



SECTION XXXIII. 

LEIBNITZ. 

As empiricism sprang from the striving to subject the intel- 
lectual to the material, to materialize the spiritual, so on the other 
hand, idealism had its source in the effort to spiritualize the 
material, or so to apprehend the conception of mind that matter 
could be subsumed under it. To the empiric-sensualistic direc- 
tion, mind was nothing but refined matter, while to the idealistic 
direction matter was only degenerated {yergrohert) mind ('^ a con- 
fused notion," as Leibnitz expresses it). The former, in its 
logical development, was driven to the principle that only material 
things exist, the latter (as with Leibnitz and Berkeley) comes to 
the opposite principle, that there are only souls and their ideas. 
For the partial realistic stand-point, material things were the truly 
substantial. But for the idealistic stand-point, the substantial 
belongs alone to the intellectual world, to the Egos. Mind, to the 
partial realism, was essentially void, a tabula rasa^ its whole con- 
tent came to it from the external world. But a partial idealism 
sought to carry out the principle that nothing can come into the 
mind which had not at least been preformed within it, that all its 



212 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

knowledge is furnislied it by itself. According to the former view 
knowledge was a passive relation, according to the latter was it 
wholly active. While, in fine, a partial realism had attempted to 
explain the becoming in nature for the most part through real, 
i, e. through mechanical motives [Vhomme machine is the title of 
one of la Mettrie's writings), idealism had sought an explanation 
of the same through ideal motives, i. e. teleologically. While the 
former had made its prominent inquiry for moving causes, and 
had, indeed, often ridiculed the search for a final cause ; it is final 
causes toward which the latter directs its chief aim. The media- 
tion between mind and matter, between thought and being, will 
now be sought in the final cause, in the teleological harmony of 
all things (pre-estahlished harmony). The stand-point of Leib- 
nitz may thus be characterized in a word. 

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in 1646, at Leipsic, 
where his father was professor. Having chosen the law as his 
profession, he entered the university in 1661, and in 1663 he 
defended for his degree of doctor in philosophy, his dissertation 
de principio individuiy a theme well characteristic of the direc- 
tion of his later philosophizing. He afterwards went to Jena, 
and subsequently to Altdorf, where he became doctor of laws. 
At Altdorf he was offered a professorship of jurisprudence, which 
he refused. The rest of his life was unsettled and desultory, 
spent for the most part in courts, where, as a versatile courtier, he 
was employed in the most varied duties of diplomacy. In the 
year 1672 he went to Paris, in order to induce Louis XIV. to 
undertake the conquest of Egypt. He subsequently visited Lon- 
don, whence he was afterwards called to Hanover, as councillor 
of the Duke of Brunswick. He received later a post as librarian 
at Wolfenbiittel, between which place and Hanover he spent the 
most of his subsequent life, though interrupted with numerous 
journeys to Vienna, Berlin, etc. He was intimately associated 
with the Prussian Electress, Maria Charlotte, a highly talented 
woman, who surrounded herself with a circle of the most dis- 
tinguished scholars of the time, and for whom Liebnitz wrote, at 
her own request, his Theodicee. In 1701, after Prussia had be- 



LEIBNITZ. 213 

come a kingdom, an academy was established at Berlin, through 
his efforts, and he became its first president. Similar, but fruit- 
less attempts were made by him to establish academies in Dres- 
den and Vienna. In 1711 the title of imperial court councillor, 
and a baronage, was bestowed upon him by the emperor Charles VI. 
Soon after, he betook himself to Vienna, where he remained a 
considerable period, and wrote his Monadology, at the solicitation 
of Prince Eugene. He died in 1716. Next to Aristotle, Leib- 
nitz was the most highly gifted scholar that had ever lived ; with 
the richest and most extensive learning, he united the highest and 
most penetrating powers of mind. Germany has reason to be 
proud of him, since, after Jacob Boehme, he is the first philoso- 
pher of any note among the Germans. With him philosophy 
found a home in Germany. It is to be regretted that the great 
variety of his efforts and literary undertakings, together with his 
roving manner of life, prevented him from giving any connected 
exhibition of his philosophy. His views are for the most part 
developed only in brief and occasional writings and letters, com- 
posed frequently in the French language. It is hence not easy 
to state his philosophy in its internal connection, though none of 
his views are isolated, but all stand strictly connected with each 
other. The following are the chief points : 

1. The DocTPaN]E] of Monads. — The fundamental peculiarity 
of Leibnitz's theory is its opposition to Spinozism. Substance, 
as the indeterminate universal, was with Spinoza the only positive. 
With Leibnitz also the conception of substance lay at the basis of 
his philosophy, but his definition of it was entirely different. 
While Spinoza had sought to exclude from his substance every 
positive determination, and especially all acting, and had appre- 
hended it simply as pure being, Leibnitz viewed it as living 
activity and active energy, an example for which might be found 
in a stretched bow, which moved and straightened itself through 
its own energy as soon as the external hindrance was removed. 
That this active energy forms the essence of substance is a prin- 
ciple to which Leibnitz ever returns, and from which, in fact, all 
the other chief points in his philosophy may be derived. From 



214 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

this there follow at the outset two determinations of substance 
directly opposed to Spinozism ; first, that it is a single being, a 
monad; and second, that there are a multiplicity of monads. 
The first follows because substance, in so far as it exercises an 
activity similar to an elastic body, is essentially an excluding 
activity, or repulsion; the conception of an individual or a monad 
being that which excludes another from itself The second fol- 
lows because the existence of one monad involves the existence of 
many. The conception of one individual postulates other indi- 
viduals, which stand over against the one as excluded from it. 
Hence the fundamental thesis of the Leibnitz philosophy in oppo- 
sition to Spinozism is this, viz., there is a multiplicity of individ- 
ual substances or monads. 

2, The Monads more Accurately Determined. — The monads 
of Leibnitz are similar to atoms in their general features. Like 
these they are corpuscular units, independent of any external in- 
fluence, and indestructible by any external power. But notwith- 
standing this similarity, there is an important and characteristic 
difference between the two. First, the atoms are not distinguished 
from each other, they are all qualitatively alike ; but each one of 
the monads is different in quality from every other, every one is a 
peculiar world for itself, every one is different from every other. 
According to Leibnitz, there are no two things in the world which 
are exactly alike. Secondly, atoms can be considered as extended 
and divisible, but the monads are metaphysical points, and actu- 
ally indivisible. Here, lest we should stumble at this proposition 
(for an aggregate of unextended monads can never give an ex- 
tended world), we must take into consideration Leibnitz's view of 
space, which, according to him, is not something real, but only 
confused, subjective representation. Thirdly, the monad is a 
representative being. With the atomists such a determination 
would amount to nothing, but with Leibnitz it has a very impor- 
tant part to play. According to him, in every monad, every other 
is reflected ; every monad is a living mirror of the universe, and 
ideally contains the whole within itself as in a germ. In thus 
mirroring the world, however, the monad is not passive but spon- 



LEIBNITZ. 215 

taneously self-active : it does not receive the images which it 
mirrors, but produces them spontaneously itself, as the soul does a 
dream. In every monad, therefore, the all-seeing and all-know- 
ing one might read every thing, even the future, since this is po- 
tentially contained in the present. Every monad is a kind of 
God. (Parvus in suo genere Deus.) 

3. The Phe-established Harmony. — The universe is thus 
the sum of all the monads. Every thing, every composite, is an 
aggregate of monads. Thus every bodily organism is not one 
substance, but many, it is a multiplicity of monads, like a machine 
which is made up of a number of distinct pieces of mechanism. 
Leibnitz compared bodies to a fish-pond, which might be full of 
living elements, though dead itself The ordinary view of things 
is thus wholly set aside ; the truly substantial does not belong 
to bodies, i, e, to the aggregates, but to their original elements. 
Matter in the vulgar sense, as something conceived to be without 
mind, does not at all exist. How now must the inner connection 
of the universe be conceived ? In the following way. Every 
monad is a representative being, and at the same time, each one 
is different from every other. This difference, therefore, depends 
alone upon the difference of representation : there are just as 
many different degrees of representation as there are monads, and 
these degrees may be fixed according to some of their prominent 
stages. The representations may be classified according to the 
distinction between confused and distinct knowledge. Hence a 
monad of the lowest rank (a monad toute nue) will be one which 
simply represents, i, e. which stands on the stage of most confused 
knowledge. Leibnitz compares this state with a swoon, or with 
our condition in a dreamy sleep, in which we are not without rep- 
resentations, (notions) — for otherwise we could have none when 
awaking — but in which the representations are so numerous that 
they neutralize each other and do not come into the consciousness. 
This is the stage of inorganic nature. In a higher rank are those 
monads in which the representation is active as a formative vital 
force, though still without consciousness. This is the stage of the 
vegetable world. Still higher ascends the life of the monad when 



216 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it attains to sensation and memory, as is the case in the animal 
kingdom. The lower monads may be said to sleep, and the brute 
monads to dream. When still farther the soul rises to reason or 
reflection, we call it mind, spirit. — The distinction of the monads 
from each other is, therefore, this, that each one, though mirroring 
the whole and the same universe in itself, does it from a different 
point of view, and, therefore, differently, the one more, and the 
rest less perfectly. Each one is a different centre of the world 
which it mirrors. Each one contains the whole universe, the 
whole infinity within itself, and in this respect is like God, the 
only difference being that God knows every thing with perfect 
distinctness, while the monad represents it confu^^edly, though one 
monad may represent it more confusedly than another. The 
limitation of a monad does not, therefore, consist in its containing j 
less than another or than God, but only in its containing more 
imperfectly or in its representing less distinctly. — Upon this stand- 
point the universe, in so far as every monad mirrors one and the 
same universe, though each in a different way, represents a drama 
of the greatest possible difference, as well as of the greatest pos- 
sible unity and order, i. e. of the greatest possible perfection, or 
the absolute harmony. For distinction in unity is harmony. — 
But in still another respect the universe is a system of harmony. 
Since the monads do not work upon each other, but each one fol- 
lows only the law of its own being, there is danger lest the inner 
harmony of the universe may be disturbed. How is this danger 
removed ? Thus, viz., every monad mirrors the whole and the 
same universe. The changes of the collected monads, therefore, 
run parallel with each other, and in this consists the harmony of 
all as pre-established by God. 

4. The Relation of the Deity to the Monads, — What part 
does the conception of God play in the system of Leibnitz ? An 
almost idle one. Following the strict consequences of his system, 
Leibnitz should have held to no proper theism, but the harmony 
of the universe should have taken the place of the Deity. Ordi- 
narily he considers God as the sufficient cause of all monads. 
But he was also accustomed to consider the final cause of a thing 



LEIBNITZ. 217 

as its sufficient cause. In this respect, therefore, he almost iden- 
tifies God and the absolute final cause. Elsewhere he considers 
the Deity as a simple primitive substance, or as the individual 
primitive unity. Again, he speaks of God as a pure immaterial 
actuality, actus purus, while to the monads belongs matter, i. e, 
restrained actuality, striving, appetitio. Once he calls him a 
monad, though this is in manifest contradiction with the deter- 
minations otherwise assigned him. It was for Leibnitz a very 
difficult problem to bring his monadology and iis theism into har- 
mony with each other, without giving up the premises of both. 
If he held fast to the substantiality of the monads, he was in dan- 
ger of making them independent of the Deity, and if he did not, 
he could hardly escape falling back into Spinozism. 

5. The Kelation of Soul and Body is clearly explained on 
the standpoint of the pre-established harmony. This relation, tak- 
ing the premises of the monadology, might seem enigmatical. If 
no monad can work upon any other, how can the soul work upon 
the body to lead and move it ? The enigma is solved by the pre- 
established harmony. While the body and soul, each one inde- 
pendently of the other, follows the laws of its being, the body 
working mechanically, and the soul pursuing ends, yet God has 
established such a concordant harmony of the two activities, such 
a parallelism of the two functions,. that there is in fact a perfect 
unity for body and soul. There are, says Leibnitz, three views 
respecting the relation of body and soul. The first and most 
common supposes a reciprocal influence between the two, but such 
a view is untenable, because there can be no interchange between 
mind and matter. The second and occasional one {cf, ^ XXV. 1), 
brings about this interchange through the constant assistance of 
God, which is nothing more nor less than to make God a Deus ex 
machina. Hence the only solution for the problem is the hypothe- 
sis of a pre-established harmony. Leibnitz illustrates these three 
views in the following example. Let one conceive of two watches, 
whose hands ever accurately point to the same time. This 
agreement may be explained, first (the common view), by sup- 
posing an actual connection between the hands of each, so that 
10 



218 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the hand of the one watch might draw the hand of the other after 
it, or second (the occasional view), by conceiving of a watch- 
maker who continually keeps the hands alike, or in fine (the pre- 
established harmony), by ascribing to each a mechanism so ex- 
quisitely wrought that each one goes in perfect independence of 
the other, and at the same time in entire agreement with it. — That 
the soul is immortal (indestructible), follows at once from the 
doctrine of monads. There is no proper death. That which is 
called death is only the soul losing a part of the monads which 
compose the mechanism of its body, while the living element goes 
back to a condition similar to that in which it was before it came 
upon the theatre of the world. 

6. The monadology has very important consequences in refer- 
ence to THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. As the philosophy of Lcibuitz, 
by its opposition to Spinozism, had to do with the doctrine of be- 
ing, so by its opposition to the empiricism of Locke must it expound 
the theory of knowledge. Locke's Essay on the Human Under- 
standing had attracted Leibnitz without satisfying him, and he 
therefore attempted a new investigation in his Nouveaux Essais, 
in which he defended the doctrine of innate ideas. But this 
hypothesis of innate ideas Leibnitz now freed from that defective 
view which had justified the objections of Locke. The innateness 
of the ideas must not be held as though they were explicitly and 
consciously contained in the mind, but rather the mind possesses 
them potentially and only virtually, though with the capacity to 
produce them out of itself. All thoughts are properly innate, i. e. 
they do not come into the mind from without, but are rather pro- 
duced by it from itself. Any external influence upon the mind is 
inconceivable, it even needs nothing external for its sensations. 
While Locke had compared the mind to an unwritten piece of 
paper, Leibnitz likened it to a block of marble, in which the veins 
prefigure the form of the statue. Hence the common antithesis 
between rational and empirical knowledge disappears with Leib- 
nitz in the degrees of greater or less distinctness. — Among these 
theoretically innate ideas, Leibnitz recognizes two of special 
prominence, which take the first rank a^ principles of all knowl- 



LEIBNITZ. 219 

edge and all ratiocination, — the principle of contradiction {prin- 
cipium contradictionis)^ and the principle of sufficient cause 
{principium rationis sufficientis). To these, as a principle of 
the second rank, must be added the principium indiscernibilium^ 
or the principle that there are in nature no two things wholly 
alike. 

7. The most elaborate exhibition of Leibnitz's theological 
views is given in his Theodicee. The Theodicee, is, however, his 
weakest work, and has but a loose connection with the rest of his 
philosophy. Written at the instigation of a woman, it belies this 
origin neither in its form nor in its content — not in its form, for 
in its effort to be popular it becomes diffuse and unscientific, and 
not in its content, for it accommodates itself to the positive 
dogmas and the premises of theology farther than the scientific 
basis of the system of Leibnitz would permit. In this work, 
Leibnitz investigates the relation of Grod to the world in order to 
show a conformity in this relation to a final cause, and to free Grod 
from the charge of acting without or contrary to an aim. Why 
is the world as it is ? God might have created it very differently. 
True, answers Leibnitz, God saw an infinite number of worlds as 
possible before him, but out of all these he chose the one which 
actually is as the best. This is the famous doctrine of the best 
world, according to which no more perfect world is possible than 
the one which is. — But how so ? Is not the existence of evil at 
variance with this ? Leibnitz answers this objection by distinguish- 
ing three kinds of evil, the metaphysical, the physical, and the 
moral. The metaphysical evil, L e, the finiteness and incomplete- 
ness of things, is necessary because inseparable from finite existence, 
and is thus independent of the will of God. Physical evil (pain, 
&c.), though not independent of the will of God, is often a good con- 
ditionally, i. e, as a punishment or means of improvement. Moral 
evil or wickedness can in no way be charged to the will of God. 
Leibnitz took various ways to account for its existence, and obviate 
the contradiction lying between it and the conception of God. At 
one time he says that wickedness is only permitted by God as a 
conditio sine qua non, because without wickedness there were no 



220 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



freedom, and without freedom no virtue. Again, he reduces the 
moral evil to the metaphysical, and makes wickedness nothing but 
a want of perfection, a negation, a limitation, playing the same 
part as do the shadows in a painted picture, or the discords in a 
piece of music, which do not diminish the beauty, but only in- 
crease it through contrast. Again, he distinguishes between the 
material and the formal element in a wicked act. The material 
of sin, the power to act, is from God, but the formal element, the 
wickedness of the act, belongs wholly to man, and is the result 
of his limitation, or, as Leibnitz here and there expresses it, of his 
eternal self-predestination. In no case can the harmony of the 
universe be destroyed through such a cause. 

These are the chief points of Leibnitz's philosophy. The 
general characteristic of it as giv^en in the beginning of the pres- 
ent section, will be found to have its sanction in the specific exhi- 
bition that has now been furnished. 



SECTION XXXIV. 



BERKELEY. 



Leibnitz had not carried out the standpoint of idealism to its 
extreme. He had indeed, on the one side, explained space and 
motion and bodily things as phenomena which had their existence 
only in a confused representation, but on the other side, he had 
not wholly denied the existence of the bodily world, but had rec- 
ognized as a reality lying at its basis, the world of monads. The 
phenomenal or bodily world had its fixed and substantial founda- 
tion in the monads. Thus Leibnitz, though an idealist, did not 
wholly break with realism. The ultimate consequence of a sub- 
jective idealism would have been to wholly deny the reality of 
the objective, sensible world, and explain corporeal objects as 
simjjly phenomena, as nothing but subjective notions without any 
objective reality as a basis. This consequence the idealistic 



BERKELEY. 221 

counterpart to tlie ultimate realistic result of materialism — ap- 
pears in George Berkeley^ wlio was born in Ireland, 1684, made 
bishop of the Anglican Church in 1734, and died in 1753. Hence, 
though he followed the empiricism of Locke, and sustained no 
outward connection with Leibnitz, we must place him in immediate 
succession to the latter as the perfecter of a subjective idealism. 

Our sensations, says Berkeley, are entirely subjective. We 
are wholly in error if we believe that we have a sensation of ex- 
ternal objects or perceive them That which we have and per- 
ceive is only our sensations. It is e, g. clear, that by the sense of 
sight we can see neither the distance, the size, nor the form of 
objects, but that we only conclude that these exist, because our 
experience has taught us that a certain sensation of sight is al- 
ways attended by certain sensations of touch. That which we 
see is only colors, clearness, obscurity, &c., and it is therefore 
false to say that we see and feel the same thing. So also we 
never go out of ourselves for those sensations to which we ascribe 
most decidedly an objective character. The peculiar objects of 
our understanding are only our own affections ; all ideas are hence 
only our own sensations. But just as there can be no sensations 
outside of the sensitive subject, so no idea can have existence out- 
side of him who possesses it. The so-called objects exist only in 
our notion, and have a being only as they are perceived. It is 
the great error of most philosophers that they ascribe to corporeal 
objects a being outside the conceiving mind, and do not see that 
they are only mental. It is not possible that material things 
should produce any thing so wholly distinct from themselves as 
sensations and notions. There is no such thing as a material ex- 
ternal world ; mind alone exists as thinking being, whose nature 
consists in thinking and willing. But whence then arise all our 
sensations which come to us like the images of fancy, without our 
agency, and which are thus no products of our will ? They arise 
from a spirit superior to ourselves — for only a spirit can produce 
within us notions — even from Grod. God gives us ideas ; but as 
it would be contradictory to assert that a being could give what 
it does not possess, so ideas exist in God^ and we derive them 



222 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

from liirn. These ideas in God may be called archetypes, and 
those in us ectypes. — In consequence of this view, says Berkeley, 
we do not deny an independent reality of things, we only deny 
that they can exist elsewhere than in an understanding. Instead 
therefore of speaking of a nature in which, e. g, the sun is the 
cause of warmth, &c., the accurate expression would be this : God 
announces to us through the sense of sight that we should soon 
perceive a sensation of warmth. Hence by nature we are only to 
understand the succession or the connection of ideas, and by 
natural laws the constant order in which they proceed, i. e. the 
laws of the association of ideas. This thorough-going subjective 
idealism, this complete denial of matter, Berkeley considered as 
the surest way to oppose materialism and atheism. 



SECTION XXXV. 

WOLFF. 

The idealism of Berkeley, as was to be expected from the 
nature of the case, remained without any farther development, 
but the philosophy of Leibnitz was taken up and subjected to a 
farther revision by Christian Wolff, He was born in Breslau in 
1679. He was chosen professor at Halle, where he became ob- 
noxious to the charge of teaching a doctrine at variance with the 
Scriptures, and drew upon himself such a violent opposition from 
the theologians of the university, that a cabinet order was issued 
for his dismissal on the 8th of November, 1723, and he was en- 
joined to leave Prussia within forty-eight hours on pain of being 
hung. He then became professor in Marburg, but was after- 
wards recalled to Prussia by Frederic II. immediately upon his 
accession to the throne. He was subsequently made baron, and 
died 1754. In his chief thoughts he followed Leibnitz, a con- 
nection which he himself admitted^ though he protested against 
the identification of his philosophy with that of Leibnitz, and ob- 



WOLFF. 22B 

jected to the name, Phihsophia Leibnitio-Woljiana, which was 
taken by his disciple Bilfinger. The historical merit of Wolff is 
threefold. First, and most important, he laid claim again to the 
whole domain of knowledge in the name of philosophy, and 
sought again to build up a systematic framework, and make an 
encyclopedia of philosophy in the highest sense of the word. 
Though he did not himself furnish much new material for this 
purpose, yet he carefully elaborated and arranged that which he 
found at hand. Secondly, he made again the philosophical method 
as such, an object of attention. His o'wn method is, indeed, an 
external one as to its content, namely, the mathematical or the 
mathematico-syllogistical, recommended by Leibnitz, and by the 
application of this his whole philosophizing sinks to a level for- 
malism. (For instance, in his principles of architecture, the 
eighth proposition is — " a window must be wide enough for two 
persons to recline together conveniently," — a proposition which is 
thus proved : " we are more frequently accustomed to recline and 
look out at a window in company with another person than alone, 
and hence, since the builder of the house should satisfy the owner 
in every respect (^ 1), he must make a window wide enough for 
two persons conveniently to recline within it at the same time ". 
Still this formalism is not without its advantage, for it subjects 
the philosophical content to a logical treatment. Thirdly, Wolff 
has taught philosophy to speak German, an art which it has not 
since forgotten. Next to Leibnitz, he is entitled to the merit of 
having made the German language for ever the organ of philos- 
ophy. 

The following remarks will suffice for the content and the 
scientific classification of Wolff's philosophy. He defines philos- 
ophy to be the science of the possible as such. But that is pos- 
sible which contains no contradiction. Wolff defends this de- 
finition against the charge of presuming too much. It is not 
affirmed, he says, with this definition that either he or any other 
philosopher knows every thing which is possible. The definition 
only claims for philosophy the whole province of human knowl- 
edge, and it is certainly proper that philosophy should be de- 



224 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

scribed according to the highest perfection which it can attain, 
even though it has not yet actually reached it. — In what parts 
now does this science of the possible consist ? Residing on the 
perception that there are within the soul two faculties, one of 
knowing and one of willing, Wolff divides philosophy into two 
great parts, theoretical philosophy (an expression, however, which 
first appears among his followers), or metaphysics, and practical 
philosophy. Logic precedes both as a preliminary training for 
philosophical study. Metaphysics are still farther divided by 
Wolff into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural the- 
ology ; practical philosophy he divides into ethics, whose object 
is man as man ; economics, whose object is man as a member of 
the family ; and politics, whose object is man as a citizen of the 
state. 

1. Ontology is the first part of Wolff's metaphysics. Ontol- 
ogy treats of what ar^ now called categories, or those fundamental 
conceptions which are applied to every object, and must therefore 
at the outset be investigated. Aristotle had already furnished a 
table of categories, but he had derived them wholly empirically. 
It is not much better with the ontology of Wolff; it is laid out 
like a philosophical dictionary. At its head he places the prin- 
ciple of contradiction, viz. : it is not possible for any thing to be, 
and at the same time not to be. The conception of the possible 
at once follows from this principle. That is possible which con- 
tains no contradiction. That is necessary, the opposite of which 
contradicts itself, and that is* accidental, the opposite of which is 
possible. Every thing which is possible is a thing, though only 
an imaginary one ; that which neither is, nor is possible, is no- 
thing. When many things together compose a thing, this is a 
whole, and the individual things comprehended by it are its parts. 
The greatness of a thing consists in the multitude of its parts. 
If A contains that by which we can understand the being of B, 
then that in A by which B becomes understood is the ground 
of B, and the whole A which contains the ground of B is its 
cause. That which contains the ground of its properties is the 
essence of a thing. Space is the arrangement of things which 



WOLFF. 225 

exist conjointly. Place is the determinate way in which a thing 
exists in conjunction with others. Movement is change of place. 
Time is the arrangement of that which exists successively, etc. 

2. Cosmology. — Wolff defines the world to be a series of chang- 
ing objects, which exist conjointly and successively, but which are 
so connected together that one ever contains the ground of the 
other. Things are connected in space and in time. By virtue of 
this universal connection, the world is one united whole; the 
essence of the world consists in the manner of its connection. 
But this manner cannot be changed. It can neither receive any 
new ingredients nor lose any of those it possesses. From the 
essence of the world spring all its changes. In this respect the 
world is a machine. Events in the world are only hypothetically 
necessary in so far as previous events have had a certain character; 
they are accidental in so far as the world might have been directed 
otherwise. In respect to the question whether the world had a 
beginning in time, Wolff does not express himself explicitly. 
Since God is independent of time, but the world has been from 
eternity in time, the world therefore is in no case eternal in any 
sense like God. But according to Wolff, neither space nor time 
has any substantial being. Body is a connected thing composed 
of matter, and possessing a moving power within itself. The 
powers of a body taken together are called its nature, and the 
comprehension of all being is called nature in general. That 
which has its ground in the essence of the world is called natural, 
and that which has not, is supernatural, or a wonder. At the 
close of his cosmology, Wolff treats of the perfection and imper- 
fection of the world. The perfection of a world consists in the 
harmony with each other of every thing which exists conjointly 
and successively. But since every thing has its separate rules, 
the individual must give up so much from its perfection as is 
necessary for the symmetry of the whole. 

3. Rational Psychology. — The soul is that within us which 
is self-conscious. In the self-consciousness of the soul are itself and 
other objects. Consciousness is either clear or indistinct. Clear 
consciousness is thought. The soul is a simple incorporeal sub- 

10* 



226 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

stance. There dwells within it a power to represent to itself a 
world. In this sense brutes also may have a soul, but a soul 
which possesses understanding and will is mind, and mind belongs 
alone to men. The soul of man is a mind joined to a body, and 
this is the distinction between men and superior spirits. The 
movements of the soul and of the body harmonize with each other 
by virtue of the preestablished harmony. The freedom of the 
human soul is the power according to its own arbitrament, to 
choose of two possible things that which pleases it best. But the 
soul does not decide without motives, it ever chooses that which 
it holds to be the best. Thus the soul would seem impelled to its 
action by its representations, but the understanding is not con- 
strained to its representations of that which is good and -bad, and 
hence also the will is not constrained, but free. As a simple 
being the soul is indivisible, and hence incorruptible ; the souls 
of brutes, however, have no understanding, and hence enjoy no 
conscious existence after death. This belongs alone to the human 
soul, and hence the human soul alone is immortal. 

4. Natural Theology. — Wolff uses here the cosmological 
argument to demonstrate the existence of a God. God might 
have made different worlds, but has preferred the present one as 
the best. This world has been called into being by the will of 
God. His aim in its creation was the manifestation of his own 
perfection. Evil in the world does not spring from the Divine 
will, but from the limited being of human things. God permits 
it only as a means of good. 

This brief aphoristic exposition of Wolff's metaphysics, shows 
how greatly it is related to the doctrine of Leibnitz. The latter, 
however, loses much of its speculative profoundness by the abstract 
and logical treatment it receives in the hands of Wolff. For the 
most part, the specific elements of the monad ology remain in the 
background ; with Wolff, his simple beings are not representative 
like the Monads, but more like the Atoms. Hence there is with 
him much that is illogical and contradictory. His peculiar merit in 
metaphysics is ontology, which he has elaborated far more strictly 
than his predecessors. A multitude of philosophical terminations 



II 



THE GERMAN CLEARING UP. 227 

owe to him their origin, and their introduction inco philosophical 
language. 

The philosophy of Wolff, comprehensible and distinct as it 
was, and by its composition in the G-erman language more acces- 
sible than that of Leibnitz, soon became the popular philosophy, 
and gained an extensive influence. Among the names which de- 
serve credit for their scientific treatment of it, we may mention 
Thiimming. 1697-1728; Bilfinger^ 1693-1750; Baumeister^ 
1708-1785 ; BaumgaHen the esthetic, 1714-1762 ; and his 
scholar Meier, 1718-1777. 



SECTION XXXVI. 

THE GERMAN CLEARING UP. 

Under the influence of the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff, 
though without any immediate connection with it, there arose in 
Germany during the latter half of the eighteenth century, an 
eclectic popular philosophy, whose different phases may be em- 
braced under the name of the German clearing up. It has 
but little significance for the history of philosophy, though not 
without importance in other respects. Its great aim was to secure 
a higher culture, and hence a cultivated and polished style of 
reasoning is the form in which it philosophized. It is the German 
counterpart of the French clearing up. As the latter closed 
the realistic period of development by drawing the ultimate con- 
sequence of materialism, so the former closed the idealistic series 
by its tendency to an extreme subjectivism. To the men of this 
direction, the empirical, individual Ego becomes the absolute; 
they forget every thing else for it, or rather every thing else has 
a value in their eyes only in proportion as it refers and ministers 
to the subject by contributing to its demands and satisfying its 
inner cravings. Hence the question of immortality becomes now 
the great problem of philosophy (in which respect we may men- 



228 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion Mendelssohn^ 1727-1786, the most important man in this 
direction) ; the eternal duration of the individual soul is the chief 
point of interest; objective ideas or truths of faith, e, g. the per- 
sonality of God, though not denied, cease to have an interest ; it 
is held as a standing article of belief that we can know nothing 
of God. In another current of this direction, it is moral philoso- 
phy and esthetics {Garvey, 1742-1798 ; Engel, 1741-1802 ; AbU, 
1738-1766 ; Sulzer, 1720-1779) which find a scientific treatment, 
because both these preserve a subjective interest. In general, 
every thing is viewed in its useful relations ; the useful becomes 
the peculiar criterion of truth ; that which is not useful to the 
subject, or which does not minister to his subjective ends, is set 
aside. In connection with this turn of mind stands the prevail- 
ing teleological direction which the investigations of nature as- 
sumed {BeimaruSj 1694-1765), and the utilitarian character given 
to ethics. The happiness of the individual was considered as 
the highest principle and the supreme end {Basedow j 1723-1790). 
Even religion is contemplated from this point of view. Reima- 
rus wrote a treatise upon the " advantages " of religion, in which 
he attempted to prove that religion was not subversive of earthly 
pleasure, but rather increased it; and Steh%bart (1738-1803) 
elaborated, in a number of treatises, the theme that all wisdom 
consists alone in attaining happiness, i. e, enduring satisfaction, 
and that the Christian religion, instead of forbidding this, was 
rather iiself the true doctrine of happiness. In other particulars 
Christianity received only a temperate respect ; wherever it laid 
claim to any authority disagreeable to the subject (as in individ- 
ual doctrines like that of future punishment), it was opposed, and 
in general the efi'ort was made to counteract, as far as possible, the 
positive dogma by natural religion. Reimarus, for example, the 
most zealous defender of theism and of the teleological investiga- 
tion of nature, is at the same time the author of the Wolfenbiittel 
fragments. By criticizing the Gospel history, and every thing 
positive and transmitted, and by rationalizing the supernatural in 
religion, the subject displayed its new-found independence. In 
fine, the subjective standpoint of this period exhibits itself in the 



TRANSITION TO KANT. 229 

numerous autobiographies and self- confessions then so prevalent ; 
the isolated self is the object of admiring contemplation (Rous- 
seau^ 1712-1778, and his confessions) ; it beholds itself mirrored 
in its particular conditions, sensations, and views — a sort of flirta- 
tion with itself, which often rises to sickly sentimentality. Ac- 
cording to all this, it is seen to be the extreme consequence of 
subjective idealism which constitutes the character of the German 
clearing up period, which thus closes the series of an idealistic 
development. 



SECTION XXXVII. 

TRANSITION TO KANT. 

The idealistic and the realistic stage of development to which 
we have now been attending, each ended with a one-sided result. 
Instead of actually and internally reconciling the opposition be- 
tween thought and being, they both issued in denying the one or 
the other of these factors. Realism, on its side, had made matter 
absolute ; and idealism, on its side, had endowed the empirical 
Ego with the same attribute — extremes in which philosophy was 
threatened with total destruction. It had, in fact, in Germany as 
in France, become merged in the most superficial popular philoso- 
phy. Then Kant arose, and brought again into one channel the 
two streams which, when separate from each other, threatened to 
lose themselves amid the sands. Kant is the great renovator of 
philosophy, who brought back to their point of divergence the one- 
sided efforts which had preceded him, and embraced them in their 
unity and totality. He stands in some special and fitting rela- 
tion either antagonistic or harmonious to all others — to Locke 
no less than to Hume, to the Scottish philosophers no less than 
to the English and French moralists, to the philosophy of Leib- 
nitz and of Wolff, as well as to the materialism of the French 
and the utilitarianism of the German clearing up period. His 



230 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

relation to the development of a partial idealism and a one-sided 
realism is thus stated : Empiricism had made the Ego purely pas- 
sive and subordinate to the sensible external world — idealism had 
made it purely active, and given it a sovereignty over the sensible 
world ; Kant attempted to strike a balance between these two 
claims, by affirming that the Ego as practical is free and autono- 
mic, an unconditioned lawgiver for itself, while as theoretical it 
is receptive and conditioned })j the phenomenal world ; but at the 
same time the theoretical Ego contains the two sides within itself, 
for if, on the one side, empiricism may be justified upon the 
ground that the material and only field of all our knowledge is 
furnished by experience, so on the other side, rationalism may be 
justified on the ground that there is an apriori factor and basis 
to our knowledge, for in experience itself we make use of concep- 
tions which are not furnished by experience, but are contained 
apriori in our understanding. 

In order, now, that we may bring the very elaborate frame- 
work of the Kantian philosophy into a clearer outline, let us 
briefly glance at its fundamental conceptions, and notice its chief 
principles and results. Kant subjected the activity of the hu- 
man mind in knowing, and the origin of our experience, to his 
critical investigation. Hence his philosophy is called critical 
philosophy, or criticism, because it aims to be essentially an ex- 
amination of our faculty of knowledge ; it is also called transcen- 
dental philosophy, since Kant calls the reflection of the reason 
upon its relation to the objective world, a transcendental reflec- 
tion (transcendental must not be confounded with transcendent), 
or, in other words, a transcendental knowledge is one ^' which 
does not relate so much to objects of knowledge, as to our way 
of knowing them, so far as this is apriori possible." The exami- 
nation of the faculty of knowledge, which Kant attempts in his 
" Critick of Pure Beason^'''' shows the following results. All 
knowledge is a product of two factors, the knowing subject and 
the external world. Of these two factors, the latter furnishes 
our knowledge with experience, as the matter, and the former 
with the conceptions of the understanding, as the form, through 



TRANSITION TO KANT. 231 

which a connected knowledge, or a synthesis of our perceptions 
in a whole of experience first becomes possible. If there were 
no external world, then would there be no phenomena ; if there 
were no understanding, then these phenomena, or perceptions, 
which are infinitely manifold, would never be brought into the 
unity of a notion, and thus no experience were possible. Thus, 
while intuitions without conceptions are blind, and conceptions 
without intuitions are empty, knowledge is a union of the two, 
since it requires that the form of conception should be filled with 
the matter of experience, and that the matter of experience 
should be apprehended in the net of the understanding's concep- 
tions. Nevertheless, we do not know things as they are in them- 
selves. Firsts because the categories, or the forms of our under- 
standing prevent. By bringing that which is given as the mate- 
rial of knowledge into our own conceptions as the form, there is 
manifestly a change in respect of the objects, which become 
thought of not as they are, but only as we apprehend them ; they 
appear to us only as they are transmuted into categories. But 
besides this subjective addition, there is yet another. Secondly^ 
we do not know things as they are in themselves, because even 
the intuitions which we bring within the form of the understand- 
ing's conceptions, are not pure and uncolored, but are already 
penetrated by a subjective medium, namely, by the universal form 
of all objects of sense, space and time. Space and time are also 
subjective additions, forms of sensuous intuition, which are just 
as originally present in our minds as the fundamental conceptions 
or categories of our understanding. That which we would repre- 
sent intuitively to ourselves we must place in space and time, for 
without these no intuition is possible. From this it follows that 
it is only phenomena which we know, and not things in themselves 
'separate from space and time. 

A superficial apprehension of these Kantian principles might 
lead one to suppose that Kant's criticism did not essentially go 
beyond the standpoint of Locke's empiricism. But such a sup- 
position disappears upon a careful scrutiny. Kant was obliged to 
recognize with Hume that the conceptions, cause and effect, sub- 



232 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

stance and attribute, and the other conceptions which the human 
understanding sees itself necessitated to think in the phenomena, 
and in which every one of its thoughts must be found, do not arise 
from any experience of the sense. For instance, when we become 
affected through different senses, and perceive a white color, a^ 
sweet taste, a rough surface, &c., and predicate all these of one 
thing, as a piece of sugar, there come from without only the plu- 
rality of sensations, while the conception of unity cannot come 
through sensation, but is a category or conception borne over to 
the sensations from the mind itself. But instead of denying, for 
this reason, the reality of these conceptions of the understanding, 
Kant took a step in advance, assigning a peculiar province to this 
activity of the understanding, and showing that these forms of 
thought thus furnished to the matter of experience are immanent 
laws of the human faculty of knowledge, the peculiar laws of the 
understanding's operations, which may be obtained by a perfect 
analysis of our thinking activity. (Of these laws or conceptions 
there are twelve, viz., unity, plurality, totality; reality, negation, 
limitation ; substantiality, causality, reciprocal action ; possibili- 
ty, actuality, and necessity.) 

From what has been said we can see the three chief principles 
of the Kantian theory of knowledge : 

1. We know only Phenomena and not Things in Them- 
selves. — The experience furnished us by the external world be- 
comes so adjusted and altered in its relations (for we apprehend it 
at first in the subjective framework of space and time, and then 
in the equally subjective forms of our understanding's concep- 
tions), that it no longer represents the thing itself in its original 
condition, pure and unmixed. 

2. Nevertheless Experience is the only Province of our 
Knowledge, and there is no Science of the Unconditioned. 
— This follows of course, for since every knowledge is the product 
of the matter of experience, and the form of the understanding, and 
depends thus upon the co-working of the sensory and the under- 
standing, then no knowledge is possible of objects for which one of 
these factors, experience, fails us ; a knowledge alone from the un- 



II 



TRANSITION TO KANT. 233 

derstanding's conceptions of the unconditioned is illusory since 
the sensory can show no unconditioned object corresponding to the 
conception. Hence the questions which Kant places at the head 
of his whole Critick ; how are synthetical judgments apriori pos- 
sible ? i, e, can we widen our knowledge apriori, by thought alone, 
beyond the sensuous experience ? is a knowledge of the super- 
sensible possible ? must be answered with an unconditional nega- 
tive. 

3. Still, if the human knowledge makes no effort to stride 
beyond the narrow limits of experience, i. e. to become transcend- 
ent, it involves itself in the greatest contradictions. The three 
ideas of the reason, the psychological, the cosmological, and the 
theological, viz. (a) the idea of an absolute subject, i. e. of the 
soul, or of immortality, (b) the idea of the world as a totality of 
all conditions and phenomena, {c) the idea of a most perfect 
being — are so wholly without application to the empirical ac- 
tuality, are so truly regulative, and not constitutive principles, 
which are only the pure products of the reason, and are so en- 
tirely without a correspondent object in experience, that when- 
ever they are applied to experience, i, e, become conceived of as 
actually existing objects, they lead to pure logical errors, to the 
most obvious paralogisms and sophisms. These errors, which are 
partly false conclusions and paralogisms, and partly unavoidable 
contradictions of the reason with itself, Kant undertook to show 
in reference to all the ideas of the reason. Take, e, g, the cosmo- 
logical idea. Whenever the reason posits any transcendental 
expressions in reference to the universe, L e. attempts to apply 
the forms of the finite to the infinite, it is at once evident that 
the antithesis of these expressions can be proved just as well as 
the thesis. The affirmation that the world has a beginning in 
time, and limits in space, can be proved as well as, and no bet- 
ter than its opposite, that the world has no beginning in time, 
and no spacial limits. Whence it follows that all speculative cos 
mology is an assumption by the reason. So also with the theo- 
logical idea ; it rests on bare logical paralogisms, and false con- 
clusions, as Kant, with great acuteness, shows in reference to each 



234 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



il 



of the proofs for the being of a God, which previous dogmatii 
philosophies had attempted. It is therefore impossible to prove 
and to conceive of the existence of a God as a Supreme Being, or 
of the soul as a real subject, or of a comprehending universe. 
The peculiar problems of metaphysics lie outside the province 
of philosophical knowledge. ♦ 

Such is the negative part of the Kantian philosophy ; its pos- 
itive complement is found in the " Griiich of the Practical 
Beasony While the mind as theoretical and cognitive is wholly 
conditioned, and ruled by the objective and sensible world, and 
thus knowledge is only possible through intuition, yet as practical 
does it go wholly beyond the given (the sense impulse), and is de- 
termined only through the categorical imperative, and the moral 
law, which is itself, and is therefore free and autonomic; the 
ends which it pursues are those which itself, as moral spirit, 
places before itself; objects are no more its masters and lawgiv- 
ers, to which it must yield if it would know the truth, but iti 
servants, which it may use for its own ends in actualizing iti 
moral law. While the theoretical mind is united to a world of 
sense and phenomena, a world obedient to necessary laws, the 
practical mind, by virtue of the freedom essential to it, by virtue 
of its direction towards an absolute aim, belongs to a purely in- 
telligible and supersensible world. This is the practical idealism 
of Kant, from which he derives the three practical postulates of 
the immortality of the soul, moral freedom, and the being of a 
God, which, as theoretical truths, had been before denied. 

With this brief sketch for our guidance, let us now pass on 
to a more extended exposition of the Kantian Philosophy. 



i 

ft 



KANT. 235 



SECTION XXXVIII. 

KANT. 

Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg in Prussia, April 
22, 1724. His father an honest saddlemaker, and his mother a 
prudent and pious woman, exerted a good influence upon him in 
his earliest youth. In the year 1740 he entered the university, 
where he connected himself with the theological department, but 
devoted the most of his time to philosophy, mathematics, and 
physics. He commenced his literary career in his twenty-third 
year, in 1747, with a treatise entitled " Thoughts concerning the 
true estimate of Living Forces^ He was obliged by his pecu- 
niary circumstances to spend some years as a private tutor in dif- 
ferent families in the neighborhood of Konigsberg. In 1755 he 
took a place in the university as ^^ privat-docent,''^ which position 
he held for fifteen years, during which time he gave lectures upon 
logic, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, and also, during the 
latter part of the time, upon ethics, anthropology, and physical 
geography. At this period he adhered for the most part to the 
school of Wolff, though early expressing his doubts in respect of 
dogmatism. From the publication of his first treatise he applied 
himself to writing with unwearied activity, though his great 
work, the " Critich of pure Reason^'''' did not appear till his 
fifty-seventh year, 1781. His ^^ Critich of the practical Beason^'^ 

< was issued in 1787, and his '-^Religion within the hounds of 
pure Reason^'''' in 1793. In 1770, in his forty-sixth year, he was 
chosen ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics, a chair which 
he continued to fill uninterruptedly till 1794, when the weakness of 
age obliged him to leave it. Invitations to professorships at Jena, 
Erlangen, and Halle, were given him and rejected. As soon as 
he became known, the noblest and most active minds flocked from 
all parts of Germany to Konigsberg, to sit at the feet of the sage 

j who was master there. One of his worshippers, Keuss, professor 



236 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of philosophy at Wiirzburg, who abode but a brief time at Ko- 
nigsberg, entered his chamber, declaring that he had come one 
hundred and sixty miles* in order to see Kant and to speak with 
him. — During the last seventeen years of his life he occupied a 
little house with a garden, in a quiet quarter of the city, where 
his calm and regular mode of life might be undisturbed. His 
habits of life were very simple. He never left his native province 
even to go as far as Dantzic. His longest journeys were to visit 
some country-seats in the environs of Konigsberg. Neverthe- 
less, as his lectures upon physical geography testify, he acquired 
by reading the most accurate knowledge of the earth. He knew 
all of Rousseau's works, of which Emile at its first appearance 
detained him for a number of days from his customary walks. 
Kant died February 12, 1804, in the eightieth year of his life. 
He was of medium stature, finely built, with blue eyes, and always 
enjoyed sound health till in his latter years, when he became 
childish. He was never married. His character was marked by 
an earnest love of truth, great candor, and simple modesty. 

Though Kant's great work, the '' Critick of pure Eeason,'^ 
which created an epoch in the history of philosophy, did not ap-l 
pear till 1781 ; yet had he previously shown an approach towards 
the same standpoint in several smaller treatises, and particularly" 
in his inaugural dissertation which appeared in 1770, ^^ Concern- 
ing the form and the principles of the Sense- World and that 
of the Understanding y Kant himself refers the inner genesis 
of his critical standpoint to Hume. ^' I freely confess," he 
says, ^' that it was David Hume who first roused me from my 
dogmatic slumber, and gave a difierent direction to my investi- 
gations in the field of speculative philosophy." The critical view 
therefore first became developed in Kant as he left the dogmatic 
metaphysical school, the Wolffian philosophy in which he had 
grown up, and went over to the study of a sceptical empiricism 
in Hume. " Hitherto," says Kant at the close of his Critick of 
pure Reason, ^^ men have been obliged to choose either a dogmati- 

* A German mile is about four and a half English miles. — Tr. 



_i 



KANT. 237 

cal direction, like "Wolff, or a sceptical one, like Hume. The 
critical road alone is yet open. If the reader has had pleasure 
and patience in travelling along this in my company, let him now 
contribute his aid in making this by-path into a highway, in order 
that that which many centuries could not effect may now be at- 
tained before the expiration of the present, and the reason be- 
come perfectly content in respect of that which has hitherto, but 
in vain, engaged its curiosity." Kant had the clearest conscious- 
ness respecting the relation of his criticism to the previous phi- 
losophy. He compares the revolution which he himself had 
brought about in philosophy with that wrought by Copernicus in 
astronomy. " Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowl- 
edge must regulate itself according to the objects ; but all at- 
tempts to make any thing out of them apriori, through notions 
whereby our knowledge might be enlarged, proved, under this 
supposition, abortive. Let us, then, try for once whether we do 
not succeed better with the problems of metaphysics, by assuming 
that the objects must regulate themselves according to our knowl- 
edge, a mode of viewing the subject which accords so much better 
with the desired possibility of a knowledge of them apriori, 
which must decide something concerning objects before they are 
given us. The circumstances are in this case precisely the same 
as with the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, finding that his at- 
tempt to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies did not suc- 
ceed, when he assumed the whole starry host to revolve around 
the spectator, tried whether he should not succeed better, if he 
left the spectator himself to turn, and the stars on the contrary 
at rest." In these words we have the principle of a subjective 
idealism, most clearly and decidedly expressed. 

In the succeeding exposition of the Kantian philosophy we 
shall most suitably follow the classification adopted by Kant him- 
self. His principle of classification is a psychological one. All 
the faculties of the soul, he says, may be referred to three, which 
are incapable of any farther reduction; knowing, feeling, and 
desire. The first faculty contains the principles, the governing 
laws for all the three. So far as the faculty of knowledge con- 



238 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tains the principles of knowledge itself, is it theoretical reason, 
and SO far as it contains the principles of desire and action, is it 
practical reason, while, so far as it contains the principles which 
regulate the feelings of pleasure and pain, is it a faculty of 
judgment. Thus the Kantian philosophy (on its critical side) 
divides itself into three criticks, (1) Critick of pure i. e. theoret- 
ical reason, (2) Critick of practical reason, (3) Critick of the 
judgment. 

I. Critick of pure Reason. — The critick of pure reason, 
gays Kant, is the inventory in which all our possessions through 
pure reason are systematically arranged. What are these pos- 
sessions ? When we have a cognition, what is it that we bring 
thereto ? To answer these questions, Kant explores the two 
chief fields of our theoretical consciousness, the two chief factors 
of all knowledge, the sensory and the understanding. Firstly : 
what does our sensory or our faculty of intuition possess apriori ? 
Secondly ; what is the apriori possession of our understanding ? 
The first of these questions is discussed in the transcendental 
jEsthetics (a title which we must take not in the sense now com- 
monly attached to the word, but in its etymological signification 
as the ^' science of the apriori principles of the sensory ") ; and 
the second in the transcendental Logic or Analytics. Sense and 
understanding are thus the two factors of all knowledge, the two 
stalks — as Kant expresses it — of our knowledge, which may 
spring from a common root, though this is unknown to us : the i 
sensory is the receptivity, and the understanding the spontaneity 
of our cognitive faculty ; by the sensory, which can only furnish 
intuitions, objects become given to us ; by the understanding, 
which forms conceptions, these objects become thought. Concep- 
tions without intuitions are empty ; intuitions without conceptions 
are blind. Intuitions and conceptions constitute the reciprocally 
complemental elements of our intellectual activity. What now 
are the apriori principles respectively of our knowledge, through 
tlie sense and through the thought ? The first of these questions, 
as already said, is answered by 

1. The Transcendental .Esthetics. — To anticipate at once 



KANT. 239 

the answer, we may say that the apriori principles of our knowledge 
through the sense, the original forms of sensuous intuition, are 
space and time. Space is the form of the external sense, by 
means of which objects are given to us as existing outside of our* 
selves separately and conjointly ; time is the form of the inner 
sense, by means of which the circumstances of our own soul-life 
become objects to our consciousness. If we abstract every thing 
belonging to the matter of our sensations, space remains as the 
universal form in which all the materials of the external sense 
must be arranged. If we abstract every thing which belongs to 
the matter of our inner sense, time remains as the form which 
the movement of the mind had filled. Space and time are the 
highest forms of the outer and inner sense. That these forms 
lie apriori in the human mind, Kant proves, first, directly from 
the nature of these conceptions themselves ; and, secondly, indi- 
rectly by showing that without apriori presupposing these con- 
ceptions, it were not possible to have any certain science of un- 
doubted validity. The first of these he calls the metajphysicalj 
and the second the transcendental discussion, 

(1.) In the metaphysical discussion it is to be shown, (a) that 
space and time are apriori given, (6) that these notions belong to 
the sensory (aesthetics) and not to the understanding (logic), i. e, 
that they are intuitions and not conceptions, {a) That space 
and time are apriori is clear from the fact that every experience, 
before it can be, must presuppose already a space and time. I 
perceive something as external to me ; but this external presup- 
poses space. Again, I have two sensations at the same time and 
successively ; this presupposes time, ijb) Space and time, how- 
ever, are by no means conceptions, but forms of intuition, or in- 
tuitions themselves. For in every universal conception the indi- 
vidual is comprehended under it, and is not a part of it ; but in 
space and time, all individual spaces and times are parts of and 
contained within the universal space and the universal time. 

(2.) In the transcendental discussion Kant draws his proof 
indirectly by showing that certain sciences, universally recognized 
as such, can only be conceived upon the supposition that space 



240 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



I 



and time are apriori. A pure mathematics is only possible on 
the ground that space and time are pure and not empirical intu- 
itions. Kant comprises the whole problem of the Transcendental 
^Esthetics in the question — how are pure mathematical sciences 
possible ? The ground, says Kant, upon which pure mathematics 
moves, is space and time. But now mathematics utters its prin- 
ciples as universal and necessary. Universal and necessary prin-J | 
ciples, however, can never come from experience ; they must have 
an apriori ground ; consequently it is impossible that space and 
time, out of which mathematics receives its principles, should be« 
first given aposteriori ; they must be given apriori as pure in- 
tuitions. Hence we have a knowledge apriori, and a science - 
which rests upon apriori grounds ; and the matter simply resolves I 
itself into this, viz. : whosoever should deny that apriori knowl- 
edge cap be, must also at the same time deny the possibility of 
mathematics. But if the fundamental truths of mathematics 
are intuitions apriori, we might conclude that there may be also4 
apriori conceptions, out of which, in connection with these pure 
intuitions, a metaphysics could be formed. This is the positive 
result of the Transcendental ^Esthetics, though with this positive 
side the negative is closely connected. Intuition or immediate 
knowledge can be attained by man only through the sensory, 
whose universal intuitions are only space and time. But since 
these intuitions of space and time are no objective relations, but 
only subjective forms, there is therefore something subjective 
mingled with all our intuitions, and we can know things not as 
they are in themselves, but only as they appear to us through 
this subjective medium of space and time. This is the meaning 
of the Kantian principle, that we do not know things in them- 
selves, but only phenomena. But if on this account we should 
affirm that all things are in space and time, this would be too 
much ; they are in space and time only for us, — all phenomena 
of the external sense appearing both in space and in time, and all 
phenomena of the inner sense appearing only in time. Notwith- 
standing this, Kant would in no ways have admitted that the 
world of sense is mere appearance. He affirmed, that while he 



I 



KANT. 241 

contended for a transcendental ideality, there was, nevertheless, an 
empirical reality of space and time : things external to ourselves 
exist just as certainly as do we and the circumstances within us, 
only they are not represented to us as they are in themselves and 
in their independence of space and of time. As to the question, 
whether there is any thing in the thing itself back of the phe- 
nomena, Kant intimates in the first edition of his Critick, that it 
is not impossible that the Ego and the thing-in-itself are one and 
the same thinking substance. This thought, which Kant threw 
out as a mere conjecture, was the source of all the wider de- 
velopments of the latest philosophy. It was afterwards the fun- 
damental idea of the Fichtian system, that the Ego does not 
become afi"ected through a thing essentially foreign to it, but 
purely through itself. In the second edition of his Critick, how- 
ever, Kant omitted this sentence. 

The Transcendental Esthetics closes with the discussion of 
space and time, i. e. with finding out what is in the sensory apriori. 
But the human mind cannot be satisfied merely with the receptive 
relation of the sensory ; it does not simply receive objects, but it 
applies to these its own spontaneity, and attempts to think these 
through its conceptions, and embrace them in the forms of its under- 
standing. It is the object of the Transcendental Analytic (which 
forms the first part of the Transcendental Logic) ^ to examine these 
apriori conceptions or forms of thought which lie originally in the 
understanding, as the forms of space and time do in the intuitive 
faculty. 

2. The Transcendental Analytic. — It is the first problem 
of the Analytic to attain the pure conceptions of the understand- 
ing. Aristotle had already attempted to form a table of these 
conceptions or categories, but he had collected them empirically 
instead of deriving them from a common principle, and had num- 
bered among them space and time, though these are no pure con- 
ceptions of the understanding, but only forms of intuition. But 
if we would have a perfect, pure, and regularly arranged table of 
all the conceptions of the understanding, or all the apriori forms 
of thought, we must look for a principle out of which we may 
11 



242 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

derive them. This principle is the judgment. The general funda- 
mental conceptions of the understanding may be perfectly attained 
if we look at all the different modes or forms of the judgment. 
For this end Kant considers the different kinds of judgment as 
ordinarily pointed out to us by the science of logic. Now logic 
shows that there are four kinds of judgment, viz., judgments of 



Quantity, 


Quality. 


Relation, 


Modality, 


Universal, 


Affirmative, 


Categorical, 


Problematical, 


Plurative, 


Negative, 


Hypothetical, 


Assertive, 


Singular. 


Illimitable. 


Disjunctive. 


Apodictic. 



From these judgments result the same number of fundamental 
conceptions or categories of the understanding, viz. : 



Quantify. 


Quality. 


Relation, 


Modality. 


Totality, 


Reality, 


Substance and in- 


Possibility and im- 


Multiplicity, 


Negation, 


herence. 


possibility. 


Unity. 


Limitation. 


Cause and depend- 


Being and not-be- 






ence, 


ing, 






Reciprocal action. 


Necessity and acci- 
dence. 



From these twelve categories all the rest may be derived by 
combination. From the fact that these categories are shown to 
belong apriori to the understanding, it follows, (1) that these 
conceptions are apriori, and hence have a necessary and universal 
validity, (2) that by themselves they are empty forms, and attain 
a content only through intuitions. But since our intuition is 
wholly through the sense, these categories have their validity only 
in their application to the sensuous intuition, which becomes a 
proper experience only when apprehended in the conceptions of 
the understanding. — Here we meet a second question ; how does 
this happen ? How do objects become subsumed under these 
forms of the understanding, which for themselves are so empty ? 

There would be no difficulty with this subsumption if the ob- 
jects and the conceptions of the understanding were the same in 
kind. But they are not. Because the objects come to the under- 
standing from the sensory, they are of the nature of the sense. 



KANT. 243 

Hence the question arises : how can these sensible objects be sub- 
sumed under pure conceptions of the understanding, and fundamen- 
tal principles (judgments apriori), be formed from them ? This 
cannot result immediately, but there must come in between the 
two, a third, which must have some thing in common with each, 
i. e. which is in one respect pure and apriori, and in another sen- 
sible. The two pure intuitions of the Transcendental -Esthetics, 
space and time, especially the latter, are of such a nature. A 
transcendental time determination, as the determination of coeta- 
neousness, corresponds on the one side to the categories, because it 
is apriori, and on the other side to the phenomenal objects, be- 
cause every thing phenomenal can be represented only in time. 
The transcendental time determination, Kant calls in this respect 
the transcendental schema, and the use which the understanding 
makes of it, he calls the transcendental schematism of the pure 
understanding. The schema is a product of the imaginative 
faculty, which self-aetively determines the inner sense to this, 
though the schema is something other than a mere image. An 
image is always merely an individual and determinate intuition, 
but the schema merely represents the universal process of the 
imagination, by which it furnishes for a conception a proper image. 
Hence the schema can only exist in the conception, and never suf- 
fers itself to be brought within the sensuous intuition. If, now, 
we consider more closely the schematism of the understanding, 
and seek the transcendental time determination for every category, 
we find that : 

(1) Quantity has for a universal schema the series of time or 
number, which represents the successive addition of one and one 
of the same kind. I can only represent to myself the pure un- 
derstanding conception of greatness, except as I bring into the 
imagination a number of units one after another. If I stop this 
process at its first beginning, the result is unity ; if I let it go on 
farther I have plurality ; and if I suffer it to continue without 
limit, there is totality. Whenever I meet with objects in the 
phenomenal world, which I can only apprehend successively, I 



244 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

am directed to apply the conception of greatness, which would not 
be possible without the schema of the series of time. 

(2) Quality has for its schema the content of time. If I wish 
to represent to myself the understanding conception of reality, 
which belongs to quality, I bring before me in thought a time 
filled up, or a content of time. That is real which fills a time. 
If also I would represent to myself the pure understanding con- 
ception of negation, I bring into thought a void time. 

(3) The categories of relation take their schemata from the 
order of time / for if I would represent to myself a determinate 
relation, I always bring into thought a determinate order of things 
in time. Substance appears as the persistence of the real in 
time ; causality as regular succession in time ; reciprocal action 
as the regular coetaneousness of the determinations in the one 
substance, with the determinations in the other. 

(4) The categories of modality take their schema from the 
lohole of time J i. e. from whether, and how, an object belongs to 
time. The schema of possibility is the general harmony of a re- 
presentation with the conditions of time ; the schema of actuality 
is the existence of an object in a determined time ; that of neces- 
sity is the existence of an object for all time. 

We are thus furnished with all the means for forming meta- 
physical fundamental principles (judgments apriori) ; we have, 
firstly^ conceptions apriori, and secondly^ schemata through which 
we can apply these conceptions to objects; for since every object 
which we can perceive, falls in time, so must it also fall under 
one of these schemata, which have been borrowed from time, and 
must consequently permit the corresponding category to be ap- 
plied to it. The judgments which we here attain are synthetical. 
They are, corresponding to the four classes of categories, the fol- 
lowing : { 1 ) All phenomena are, according to intuition, extensive 
greatness, since they cannot be apprehended otherwise than 
through space and time. On this principle the axioms of intui- 
tion rely. (2) All phenomena are, according to sensation, inten- 
sive greatness, since every sensation has a determined degree, and 
is capable of increase and diminution. On this principle the an- 



KANT. 245 

ticipations of perception rest. (3) The phenomena stand under 
necessary time-determinations. They contain the substantial, 
which abides, and the accidental, which changes. In reference 
to the change of accidence, they are subject to the law of the fol- 
lowing connection, through the relation of cause and effect : as 
substances they are, in respect of their accidences, in a constant 
reciprocal action. From this principle spring the analogies of 
experience. (4) The postulates of empirical thinking are con- 
tained in the principles : (a) that which coincides with the formal 
conditions of experience, is possible, and can become phenome- 
non ; (b) that which agrees with the material conditions of expe- 
rience is actual, and is phenomenon ; (c) that, whose connection 
with the actual is determined according to the universal condi- 
tions of experience, is necessary, and must be phenomenon. Such 
are the possible and authorized synthetical judgments apriori. 
But it must not be forgotten that we are entitled to make only an 
empirical use of all these conceptions and principles, and that we 
must ever apply them only to things as objects of a possible ex- 
perience, and never to things in themselves ; for the conception 
without an object is an empty form, but the object cannot be 
given to the conception except in intuition, and the pure intuition 
of space and time needs to be filled by experience. Hence, with- 
out reference to human experience, these apriori conceptions and 
principles are nothing but a sporting of the imagination and the 
understanding, with their representations. Their peculiar deter- 
mination is only to enable us to spell perceptions, that we may 
read them as experiences. But here one is apt to fall into a delu- 
sion, which can hardly be avoided. Since the categories are not 
grounded upon the sensory, but have an apriori origin, it would 
seem as though their application would reach far beyond the 
sense ; but such a view is a delusion ; our conceptions are not 
able to lead us to a knowledge of things in themselves (noumena)^ 
since our intuition gives us only phenomena for the content of 
our conceptions, and the thing in itself can never be given in a 
possible experience ; our knowledge remains limited to the phe- 
nomena. The source of all the confusions and errors and strife 



246 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in previous metaphysics, was in confounding the phenomenal with 
the noumenal world. 

Besides the categories or conceptions of the understanding, 
which have been considered, and which are especially important for 
experience, though often applied erroneously beyond the province 
of experience, there are other conceptions whose peculiar province 
is only to deceive ; conceptions whose express determination is to 
pass beyond the province of experience, and which may conse- 
quently be called transcendent. These are the fundamental con- 
ceptions and principles of the previous metaphysics. To examine 
these conceptions, and destroy the appearance of objective science 
and knowledge, which they falsely exhibit, is the problem of the 
Transcendenial Dialectics (the second part of the transcendental 
logic). 

3. The Transcendental Dialectics. — In a strict sense, 
the reason is distinguished from the understanding. As the un- 
derstanding has its categories, the reason has its ideas ; as the 
understanding forms fundamental maxims from conceptions, the 
reason forms principles from ideas, in which the maxims of the 
understanding have their highest confirmation. The peculiar 
work of the reason is, in general, to find the unconditioned for the 
conditioned knowledge of the understanding, and to unify it. 
Hence the reason is the faculty of the unconditioned, or of prin- 
ciples ; but since it has no immediate reference to objects, but 
only to the understanding and its judgments, its activity must re- 
main an immanent one. If it would take the highest unity of 
the reason not simply in a transcendental sense, but exalt it to an 
actual object of knowledge, then it would become transcendent in 
that it applied the conceptions of the understanding to the 
knowledge of the unconditioned. From this transcending and 
false use of the categories, arises the transcendental appearance 
which decoys us beyond experience, by the delusive pretext of 
widening the domain of the pure understanding. It is the prob- 
lem of the transcendental logic to 'discover this transcendental 
appearance. 

The speculative ideas of the reason, derived from the three 



KiflSTT. 247 

kinds of logical conclusion, the categorical, the hypothetical, and 
the disjunctive, are threefold. 

(1.) The psychological idea, the idea of the soul, as a thinking 
substance (the object hitherto of rational psychology). 

(2.) The cosmological idea, the idea of the world as including 
all phenomena (the object hitherto of cosmology). 

(3.) The theological idea, the idea of Grod as the highest con- 
dition of the possibility of all things (the object hitherto of rational 
theology). 

But with these ideas, in which the reason attempts to apply 
the categories of the understanding to the unconditioned, the 
reason becomes unavoidably entangled in a semblance and an 
illusion. This transcendental semblance, or this optical illusion 
of the reason, exhibits itself differently in each of the different 
ideas. With the psychological ideas the reason perpetrates a 
simple paralogism, while with the cosmological it finds itself 
driven to contradictory affirmations or antinomies, and, with the 
theological, it wanders about in an empty ideal. 

(1.) The psychologicalideas, or the paralogisms of the ^ure 
reason, 

Kant has attempted, under this rubric, to overthrow all 
rational psychology as this had been previously apprehended. 
Rational psychology has considered the soul as a thing called by 
that name with the attribute of immateriality, as a simple sub- 
stance with the attribute of incorruptibility, as a numerically 
identical, intellectual substance with the predicate of personality, 
as an unextended and thinking being with the predicate of im- 
mortality. All these principles of rational psychology, says 
Kant, are surreptitious ; they are all derived from the one pre- 
mise, " I think; " but this premise is neither intuition nor con- 
ception, but a simple consciousness, an act of the mind which 
attends, connects, and bears in itself all representations and con- 
ceptions. This thinking is now falsely taken as a real thing ; the 
being of the Ego as object is connected with the Ego as subject, 
and that which is affirmed analytically of the latter is predicated 
synthetically of the former. But in order to treat the Ego also 



248 A HISTORY OF*PHILOSOPHY. 

as object, and to be able to apply to it categories, it must be given 
empirically, in an intuition, which is not the case. From all this 
it follows that the proofs for immortality rest upon false con- 
clusions. I can, indeed, separate my pure thinking ideally from 
the body ; but obviously, it does not follow from this that my 
thinking can exist really when separate from the body. The 
result which Kant derives from his critick of rational psychology 
is this, viz., there is no rational psychology as a doctrine which 
can furnish us with any addition to our self-knowledge, but only 
as a discipline^ which places impassable limits to the speculative 
reason in this field, in order that it may neither throw itself into 
the bosom of a soulless materialism, nor lose itself in the delusion 
of a groundless spiritualism. In this respect rational psychology 
would rather remind us, that this refusal of our reason to give a 
satisfactory answer to the questions which stretch beyond this life, 
should be regarded as an intimation of the reason for us to leave 
this fruitless and superfluous speculation, and apply our self- 
knowledge to some fruitful and practical use. 

(2.) The Antinomies of Cosmology, 

The cosmological ideas cannot be fully attained without the 
aid of the categories. (1) So far as the quantity of the world is 
concerned, space and time are the original quanta of all intuition. 
In a quantitative respect, therefore, the cosmological idea must 
hold fast to something concerning the totality of the times and 
spaces of the world. (2) In respect of quality, the divisibility of 
matter must be regarded. (3) In respect of relation, the com- 
plete series of causes must be sought for the existing effects in 
the world. (4) In respect of modality, the accidental acording to 
its conditions, or the complete dependence of the accidental in the 
phenomenon must be conceived. When, now, the reason attempts 
to establish determinations respecting these problems, it finds 
itself at once entangled in a contradiction with itself. Directly 
contrary affirmations can be made with equal validity in reference 
to each of these four points. We can show, upon grounds equally 
valid, (1) the thesis^ the world has a beginning in time and limits 
in space ; and the antithesis^ the world has neither beginning in 



KANT. 249 

time nor limit in space. (2) The thesis : every compound sub- 
stance in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists 
nothing else than the simple and that which it composes ; and the 
antithesis : no compound thing consists of simple parts, and there 
exists nothing simple in the world. (3) The thesis: causality 
according to the laws of nature, is not the only one from which 
the phenomena of the world may be deduced, but these may be 
explained through a causality in freedom ; and the antithesis : 
there is no freedom, but every thing in the world happens only 
according to natural laws. Lastly, (4) the thesis : something be- 
longs to the world either as its part or its cause, which is an ab- 
solutely necessary being ; and the antithesis : there exists no 
absolutely necessary being as cause of the world, either in the 
world or without it. From this dialectic conflict of the cosmo- 
logical ideas, there follows at once the worthlessness of the whole 
struggle. 

(3.) The ideal of the 'pure Eeason or ihe idea of God, 
Kant shows at first how the reason comes to the idea of a 
most real being, and then turns himself against the efforts of pre- 
vious metaphysics to prove its valid existence. His critick of the 
arguments employed to prove the existence of a God, is essential- 
ly the following. 

(a.) The Oniological proof , — The argument here is as follows : 
it is possible that there is a most real being ; now existence is im- 
plied in the conception of all reality, and hence, existence neces- 
sarily belongs to the conception of the most real being. But, 
answers Kant, existence is not at all a reality, or real predicate 
which can be added to the conception of a thing, but it is the posi- 
tion of a thing with all its properties. A thing, however, may 
lose its existence, and still be deprived of none of its properties. 
Hence if it have any property, it does not at all follow that it pos- 
sesses existence. Being is nothing but the logical copula, which 
does not in the least enlarge the content of the subject. A hun- 
dred actual dollars, e, g, contain no more than a hundred possible 
ones ; there is only a difference between them in reference to my 
own wealth. Thus the most real being may with perfect 
11* 



250 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

propriety be conceived of as the most real, while at the same time 
it should only be conceived of as possible, and not as actual. It 
was therefore wholly unnatural, and a simple play of school wit, 
to take an idea which had been arbitrarily formed, and deduce 
from it the existence of its corresponding object. Any effort and 
toil which might be spent upon this famous proof is thus only 
thrown away, and a man would become no richer in knowledge 
out of simple ideas than a merchant would increase his property 
by adding a number of ciphers to the balance of his accounts. 

(6.) The Cosmological proof, — This, like the ontological, in- 
fers the existence of an absolute being from the necessity of ex- 
istence. If any thing exist there must also exist an absolutely 
necessary being as its cause. But now there exists at least I my- 
self, and there must hence also exist an absolutely necessary being 
as my cause. The last cosmological antinomy is here brought in 
to criticise the argument at this stage. The conclusion is errone- 
ous, because from the phenomenal and the accidental a necessary 
being above experience is inferred. Moreover, if we allow the 
conclusion to be valid, it is still no Grod which it gives us. 
Hence the farther inference is made : that being can alone be 
necessary which includes all reality within itself If now this 
proposition should be reversed, and the aflSrmatioij made that that 
being which includes all reality is absolutely necessary, then have 
we again the ontological proof, and the cosmological falls with this. 
In the cosmological proof, the reason uses the trick of bringing 
forth as a new argument an old one with a changed dress, that it 
might seem to have the power of summoning two witnesses. 

(c.) The PhysicO'theological proof, — If thus neither concep- 
tion nor experience can furnish a proof for the divine existence, 
there still remains a third attempt, viz., to start from a determi- 
nate experienc, and endeavor to see whether the existence of a 
supreme being can not be inferred from the arrangement and 
condition of things in the world. Such is the physico-theological 
proof, which starts from the evidences of design in nature, and 
directs its argument as follows : there is evidently design in the 
universe ; this is extraneous to the things of the world, and ad- 



KANT. 251 

heres to them only contingently ; there exists therefore a neces- 
sary cause of this design which works with wisdom and intelli- 
gence ; this necessary cause must be the most real being ; the most 
real being has therefore necessary existence. — To this Kant 
answers : The physico-theological proof is the oldest, clearest, and 
most conformable to the common reason. But it is not demon- 
stration (apodictic). It infers, from the form of the world, a pro- 
portionate and sufficient cause of this form; but in this way we only 
attain an originator of the form of the world, and not an originator 
of its matter, a world-builder, and not a world-creator. To help 
out with this difficulty the cosmological proof is brought in, and 
the originator of the form becomes conceived as the necessary 
being lying at the ground of the content. Thus we have an ab- 
solute being whose perfection corresponds to that of the world. 
But in the world there is no absolute perfection ; we have there- 
fore only a very perfect being ; to get the most perfect, we must 
revert again to the ontological proof. Thus the teleological proof 
rests upon the cosmological, while this in turn has its basis in 
the ontological, and from this circle the metaphysical modes of 
proof cannot escape. 

From these considerations, it would follow that the ideal of a 
supreme being is nothing other than a regulative principle of the 
reason, by which it looks upon every connection in the world as 
if it sprang from an all-sufficient and necessary cause ; in order 
that, in explaining this connection, it may establish the rule of a 
systematic and necessary unity, it being also true that in this pro- 
cess the reason through a transcendental subreption cannot avoid 
representing to itself this formal principle as constitutive, and 
this unity as personal. But in truth this supreme being remains 
for the simply speculative use of the reason, a mere but faultless 
ideal, a conception which is the summit and the crown of the 
whole human knowledge, whose objective reality, though it cannot 
be proved with apodictic certainty, can just as little be dis- 
proved. 

With this critick of the ideas of the reason there is still an- 
other question. If these ideas have no objective significance, why 



252 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

are they found within us ? Since they are necessary, they will 
doubtless have some good purpose to subserve. What this pur- 
pose is, has already been indicated in speaking of the theological 
idea. Though not constitutive, yet are they regulative principles. 
We cannot better order the faculties of our soul, than by acting 
" as 'i/" " there were a soul. The cosmological idea leads us to 
consider the world "as^/'" the series of causes were infinite, 
without, however, excluding an intelligent cause. The theologi- 
cal idea enables us to look upon the world in all its complexity, 
as a regulated unity. Thus, while these ideas of the reason are 
not constitutive principles, by means of which our knowledge 
could be widened beyond experience, they are regulative princi- 
ples, by means of which our experience may be ordered, and 
brought under certain hypothetical unities. These three ideas, 
therefore, the psychological, the cosmological, and the theological, 
do not form an organon for the discovery of truth, but only a ca- 
non for the simplification and systematizing of our experiences. 

Besides their regulative significance, these ideas of the reason 
have also a practical importance. There is a sufficient certainty, 
not objective, but subjective, which is especially of a practical 
nature, and is called belief or confidence. If the freedom of the 
will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a God, are 
three cardinal principles, which, though not in any way contribu- 
ting to our knowledge, are yet pressed continually upon us by the 
reason, this difficulty is removed in the practical field where these 
ideas have their peculiar significance for the moral confidence. 
This confidence is not logical, but moral certainty. Since it rests 
wholly upon subjective grounds, upon the moral character, I can- 
not say it is morally certain that there is a God, but only I am 
morally certain, &c. That is, the belief in a God and in another 
world is so interwoven with my moral character, that I am in just 
as much danger of losing this character as of being deprived of 
this belief. We are thus brought to the basis of the Practical 
Reason. 

II. Critick of the Practical Reason. — With the Critick of 
the Practical Reason, we enter a wholly difi'erent world, where 



KANT. 253 

the reason richly recovers that of which it was deprived in the 
theoretical province. The essential problem of the Critick of the 
Practical Reason is almost diametrically different from that of the 
critick of the theoretical reason. The object of investigation in 
the critick of the speculative reason, was, — how can the pure 
reason know objects apriori; in the practical reason it is, — how 
can the pure reason determine apriori the will in respect of ob- 
jects. The critick of the speculative reason inquired after the 
cognizableness of objects apriori : the practical reason has nothing 
to do with the cognizableness of objects, but only with the de- 
termination of the will. Hence, in the latter critick, we have an 
order directly the reverse of that which we find in the former. 
As the original determinations of our theoretical knowledge are 
intuitions, so the original determinations of our will are principles 
and conceptions. The critick of the practical reason must, there- 
fore, start from moral principles, and only after these are firmly 
fixed, may we inquire concerning the relation in which the prac- 
tical reason stands to the sensory. 

Freedom, says Kant, is given to us apriori as an inner fact, it 
is a fact of the inner experience. While, therefore, the reason in 
the theoretical field had only a negative result, because, when it 
would attain to a true thing in itself it became transcendent, yet 
now in the practical province it becomes positive through the idea 
of freedom, because with the fact of freedom we have no need 
to go out beyond ourselves, but possess a principle immanent to 
the reason. But why then give a critick of practical reason ? In 
order to determine the relation of freedom to the sensory. Since 
the free will works through its acts upon the sensory, there must 
be a point of contact between the two. This is found in the sen- 
suous motives of the will, which exist implanted in it by nature, in 
the impulses and inclinations which, as the principle of the empiric 
in opposition to the free or pure will, bear in themselves the char- 
acter of a want of freedom. Since, then, freedom cannot be 
touched, a critick of the practical reason can only relate to these 
empirical motives, in the sense of divesting these from the claim 
of being exclusively the motives by which the will is determined. 



254 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

While, therefore, in tlie theoretical reason the empirical element 
was immanent, and the intelligible transcendent, the reverse is the 
case in the practical reason, since here the empirical is trans- 
cendent, and the intelligible immanent. It is the object of the 
Analytic to show the relation of these two momenta of the will, 
and the highest moral principle which springs therefrom, while it 
belongs to the Dialectic to solve the antinomies which result from 
the contradiction of the pure and empiric will. 

(1.) The Analytic, — Freedom, as the one constituent element 
which shows itself in the activity of our will, is the simple form 
of our actions. The universal law binding the will, is that it 
should determine itself purely from itself, independently of every 
external incitement. This capacity of self-lawgiving, or self-de- 
termining, Kant calls the autonomy of the will. The free auton- 
omic will says to man : thou oughtest ! and since this moral ought 
commands to an unconditioned obedience, the moral imperative is 
a categorical imperative. What is it now which is categorically 
commanded by the practical reason ? To answer this question, 
we must first consider the empirical will, i, e, the nature-side of 
man. 

The empirical, as the other constituent element of our will 
first produces a definite deed when it has filled the empty form 
of action with the matter of action. The matter of the will is 
furnished by the sensory in the desire of pleasure and the dread 
of pain. Since this second principle of our actions does not find 
its seat in the freedom of the will as the higher faculty of desire, 
but in the sensory, as the lower faculty of desire, and a foreign 
law is thus laid upon the will, — Kant calls it, in opposition to the 
autonomy of the reason , the heteronomy of the ivill. 

The categorical imperative is the necessary law of freedom 
binding upon all men, and is distinguished from material motives, 
in that the latter have no fixed character. For men are at variance 
in respect of pleasure and pain, since that which is disagreeable 
to one may seem pleasant to another, and if they ever agree, this 
is simply accidental. Consequently^ these material motives can 
never act the part of laws bindiDg Upon every being, but each 



KANT. 255 

subject may find bis end in a different motive. Sucb rules of act- 
ing, Kant calls maxims of tbe will. He also censures tbose 
moralists wbo bave exalted sucb maxims as universal principles 
of morality. 

Nevertbeless, tbese maxims, tbougb not tbe bigbest principles 
of morality, are yet necessary to tbe autonomy of tbe will, be- 
cause tbey alone furnisb for it a content. It is only by uniting 
tbe two sides, tbat we gain tbe true principle of morality. To 
tbis end tbe maxims of acting must be freed from tbeir limitation, 
and widened to tbe form of universal laws of tbe reason. Only tbose 
maxims sbould be cbosen as motives of action wbicb are capable 
of becoming universal laws of tbe reason. The highest principle 
of morality will tberefore be tbis : act so tbat tbe maxims of 
tby will can at tbe same time be valid as tbe principle of a uni- 
versal lawgiving, i, e, tbat no contradiction sball arise in tbe 
attempt to conceive tbe maxims of tby acting as a law universally 
obeyed. Tlirougb tbis formal moral principle all material moral 
principles wbicb can only be of a beteronomic nature, are ex- 
cluded. 

Tbe question next arises — wbat impels tbe will to act con- 
formably to tbis bigbest moral law ? Kant answers : tbe moral 
law itself, apprebended and revered, must be tbe only moving 
spring of tbe buman will. If an act wbicb in itself migbt be 
conformable to tbe moral law, be done only tbrougb some impulse 
to happiness arising simply from an inclination of tbe sense, if it 
be not done purely for tbe sake of tbe law, tben bave we simply 
legality and not rflorality. Tbat wbicb is included in every in- 
clination of tbe ^ense is self-love and self-conceit, and of tbese 
tbe former is restricted by tbe moral law, and tbe latter wbolly 
stricken down. But tbat wbicb strikes down our self-conceit and 
bumbles us must appear to us in tbe bigbest degree wortby of es- 
teem. But tbis is done by tbe moral law. Consequently tbe 
positive feeling wbicb we sball cberisb in respect of tbe moral 
law will be reverence. Tbis reverence, tbougb a feeling, is 
neitber sensuous nor patbological, for it stands opposed to tbese ; 
but is ratber an intellectual feeling, since it arises from tbe notion 



256 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the practical law of the reason. On the one side as subor- 
dination to law, the reverence includes pain; on the other side, since 
the coercion can only be exercised through the proper reason, it 
includes pleasure. Reverence is the single sensation befitting 
man in reference to the moral law. Man, as creature of sense, 
cannot rest on any inner inclination to the moral law, for he has 
ever inclinations within him which resist the law ; love to the law 
can only be considered as something ideal. — Thus the moral 
purism of Kant, or his effort to separate every impulse of the 
sense from the motives to action, merges into rigorism, or the dark 
view that duty can never be done except with resistance. A 
similar exaggeration belongs to the well-known epigram of 
Schiller, who answers the following scruple of conscience — 

The friends whom I love I gladly would serve, 

But to this inclination incites me ; 
And so I am forced from virtue to swerve 

Since my act, through aftection, delights me — 

with the following decision : 

The friends whom thou lov'st, thou must first seek to scorn, 

For to no other way can I guide thee : 
'Tis alone with disgust thou canst rightly perform 

The acts to which duty would lead thee. 

(2.) The Dialectic, — The pure reason has always its dialectics, 
since it belongs to the nature of the reason to demand the uncon- 
ditioned for the given conditioned. Hence also the practical rea- 
son seeks an unconditioned highest good for thgfl conditioned good 
after which man strives. What is this highest good ? If we 
understand by the highest good the fundamental condition of all 
other goods, then it is virtue. But virtue is not the perfect good, 
since the finite reason as sensitive stands in need also of happi- 
ness. Hence the highest good is only perfect when the highest 
happiness is joined to the highest virtue. The question now 
arises : what is the relation of these two elements of the highest 
good to each other ? Are they analytically or synthetically con- 



I! 



KANT. 257 

nected together ? The former would be affirmed by most of the 
ancients, especially by the Greek moral philosophers. We might 
allow with the Stoics, that happiness is contained as an accidental 
element in virtue, or, with the Epicureans, that virtue is con- 
tained as an accidental element in happiness. The Stoics said : 
to be conscious of one's virtue is happiness ; the Epicureans said : 
to be conscious of the maxims leading one to happiness is virtue. 
But, says Kant, an analytic connection between these two con- 
• ceptions is not possible, since they are wholly different in kind. 
Consequently there can be between them only a synthetic unity, 
and this unity more closely scanned is seen to be a causal one, so 
that the one element is cause, and the other effect. Such a rela- 
tion must be regarded as its highest good by the practical reason, 
whose thesis must therefore be : virtue and happiness must be 
bound together in a correspondent degree as cause and effect. 
But this thesis is all thwarted by the actual fact. Neither of the 
two is the direct cause of the other. Neither is the striving 
after happiness a moving spring to virtue, nor is virtue the 
efficient cause of happiness. Hence the antithesis : virtue and 
happiness do not necessarily correspond, and are not universally 
connected as cause and effect. The critical solution of this anti- 
nomy Kant finds in distinguishing between the sensible and the 
intelligible world. In the world of sense, virtue and happiness 
do not, it is true, correspond ; but the reason as noumenon is also 
a citizen of a supersensible world, where the counter -strife be- 
tween virtue and happiness has no place. In this supersensible 
world virtue is always adequate to happiness, and when man 
passes over into this he may look for the actualization of the high- 
est good. But the highest good has, as already remarked, two 
elements, (1) highest virtue, (2) highest happiness. The actual- 
ization demanded for the first of these elements postulates the 
immorialiiy of the soulj and for the second, the existence of 
God. 

{a.) To the highest good belongs in the first place perfect 
virtue or holiness. But no creature of sense can be holy : reason 
united to sense can only approximate holiness as an ideal in an 



258 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

endless progression. But such an endless progress is only pos- 
sible in an endless continuance of personal existence. If, there- 
fore, tlie highest good shall ever be actualized, the immortality of 
the soul must be presupposed. 

(&.) To the highest good belongs, in the second place, perfect 
happiness. Happiness is that condition of a rational creature in 
the world, to whom every thing goes according to his desire and 
will. This can only occur when all nature is in accord with his 
ends. But this is not the case ; as acting beings we are not the» 
cause of nature, and there is not the slightest ground in the 
moral law for connecting morality and happiness. Notwith- 
standing this, we oughi to endeavor to secure the highest good. 
It must therefore be possible. There is thus postulated the 
necessary connection of these two elements, i, e, the existence of 
a cause of nature distinct from nature, and which contains the 
ground of this connection. There must be a being as the com- 
mon cause of the natural and moral world, a beicg who knows 
our characters of intelligence, and who, according to this intelli- 
gence imparts to us happiness. Such a being is God. 

Thus from the practical reason there issue the ideas of im- 
mortality and of God, as we have already seen to be the case 
with the idea of freedom. The reality of the idea of freedom 
is derived from the possibility of a moral law ; that of the idea 
of immortality is borrowed from the possibility of a perfect 
virtue ; that of the idea of a God follows from the necessary 
demand of a perfect happiness. These three ideas, therefore, 
which the speculative reason has treated as problems that could 
not be solved, gain a firm basis in the province of the practical 
reason. Still they are not yet theoretical dogmas, but as Kant 
calls them practical postulates, necessary premises of moral action. 
My theoretical knowledge is not enlarged by them : I only know 
now that there are objects corresponding to these ideas, but of 
these objects I can know no more. Of God, for instance, we pos- 
sess and know no more than this very conception; and if we 
should attempt to establish the theory of the supersensible 
grounded upon such categories, this would be to make theology 



KANT. 259 

like a magic lantern, with its pliantasmagorical representations. 
Yet has the practical reason acquired for us a certainty respecting 
the objective reality of these ideas, which the theoretical reason 
had been obliged to leave undecided, and in this respect the prac- 
tical reason has the primacy. This relation of the two faculties 
of knowledge is wisely established in relation to the destiny of 
men. Since the ideas of God and immortality are theoretically 
obscure to us, they do not defile our moral motives by fear and 
hope, but leave us free space to act through reverence for the 
moral law. 

Thus far Kant's Critick of the Practical Reason. In con- 
nection with this we may here mention his vieivs of religion as 
they appear in his treatise upon " Religion within the Bounds of 
Pure Reason^ The chief idea of this treatise is the referring 
of religion to morality. Between morality and religion there 
may be the twofold relation, that either morality is founded upon 
religion, or else religion upon morality. If the first relation 
were real, it would give us fear and hope as principles of moral 
action ; but this cannot be, and we are therefore left alone to the 
second. Morality leads necessarily to religion, because the high- 
est good is a necessary ideal of the reason, and this can only be 
realized through a God ; but in no way may religion first incite 
us to virtue, for the idea of God may never become a moral mo- 
tive. Religion, according to Kant, is the recognition of all our 
duties as divine commands. It is revealed religion when I find 
in it the divine command, and thus learn my duty ; it is natural 
religion when I find in it my duty, and thus learn the divine com- 
mand. The Church is an ethical community, which has for its 
end the fulfilment and the most perfect exhibition of moral com- 
mands, — a union of those who with united energies purpose to 
resist evil and advance morality. The Church, in so far as it is 
no object of a possible experience, is called the invisible Church, 
which, as such, is a simple idea of the union of all the righteous 
under the divine moral government of the world. The visible 
Church, on the other hand, is that which presents the kingdom of 
God upon earth, so far as this can be attained through men. The 



260 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

requisites, and hence also the characteristics of the true visible 
Church (which are divided according to the table of the cate- 
gories since this Church is given in experience) are the following : 
(a) In respect of quantity the Church must be total or univer- 
sal ; and though it may be divided in accidental opinions, yet 
must it be instituted upon such principles as will necessarily lead 
to a universal union in one single church, (b) The quality of 
the true visible Church is purity, as a union under no other than 
moral motives, since it is at the same time purified from the 
stupidness of superstition and the madness of fanaticism, {c) 
The relation of the members of the Church to each other rests 
upon the principle of freedom. The Church is, therefore, a free 
state, neither a hierarchy nor a democracy, but a voluntary, uni- 
versal, and enduring union of heart, (d) In respect of modality 
the Church demands that its constitution should not be changed. 
The laws themselves may not change, though one may reserve to 
himself the privilege of changing some accidental arrangements 
which relate simply to the administration. — That alone which can 
establish a universal Church is the moral faith of the reason, for 
this alone can be shared by the convictions of every man. But, 
because of the peculiar weakness of human nature, we can never 
reckon enough on this pure faith to build a Church on it alone, 
for men are not easily convinced that the striving after virtue 
and an irreproachable life is every thing which God demands : 
they always suppose that they must ofi'er to God a special service 
prescribed by tradition, in which it only comes to this — that he 
is served. 

To establish a Church, we must therefore have a statutory 
faith historically grounded upon facts. This is the so-called 
faith of the Church. In every Church there are therefore two 
elements — the purely moral, or the faith of reason, and the his- 
torico-statutory, or the faith of the Church. It depends now upon 
the relation of the two elements whether a Church shall have any 
worth or not. The statutory element should ever be only the 
vehicle of the moral. Just so soon as this element becomes in 
itself an independent end, claiming an independent validity, will 



KANT. 261 

the Churcli become corrupt and irrational, and whenever the 
Church passes over to the pure faith of reason, does it approx- 
imate to the kingdom of God. Upon this principle we may dis- 
tinguish the true from the spurious service of the kingdom of 
Grod, religion from priestcraft. A dogma has worth alone in so 
far as it has a moral content. The apostle Paul himself 
would with difficulty have given credit to the dicta of the faith 
of the Church without this moral faith. From the doctrine of 
the Trinity, e. g, taken literally, nothing actually practical can be 
derived. Whether we have to reverence in the Godhead three 
persons or ten makes no difference, if in both cases we have the 
same rules for our conduct of life. The Bible also, with its in- 
terpretation, must be considered in a mpral point of view. The 
records of revelation must be interpreted in a sense which will 
harmonize with the universal rules of the religion of reason. 
Reason is in religious things the highest interpreter of the Bible. 
This interpretation in reference to some texts may seem forced, 
yet it must be preferred to any such literal interpretation as 
would contain nothing for morality, or perhaps go against every 
moral motive. That such a moral signification may always be 
found without ever entirely repudiating the literal sense, results 
from the fact that the foundation for a moral religion lay origi- 
nally in the human reason. We need only to divest the repre- 
sentations of the Bible of their mythical dress (an attempt which 
Kant has himself made, by moral explanation of some of the 
weightiest doctrines), in order to attain a rational sense which 
shall be universally valid. The historical element of the sacred 
books is in itself of no account. The maturer the reason be- 
comes, the more it can hold fast for itself the moral sense, so 
much the more unnecessary will be the statutory institutions of 
the faith of the Church. The transition of the faith of the 
Church to the pure faith of reason is the approximation to the 
kingdom of God, to which, however, we can only approach nearer 
and nearer in an infinite progress. The actual realization of 
the kingdom of God is the end of the world, the cessation of 
history. 



262 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

III. Critick of the Faculty of Judgment. — The con- 
ception of this science Kant gives in the following manner. 
The two faculties of the human mind hitherto considered were 
the faculty of knowledge and that of desire. It was proved in 
the Critick of pure Reason, that the understanding only as faculty 
of knowledge included constitutive principles apriori ; and it was 
shown in the Critick of Practical Reason, that the reason pos- 
sesses constitutive principles apriori, simply in reference to the 
faculty of desire. Whether now the faculty of judgment^ as 
the middle link between understanding and reason, can take its 
object — the feeling of pleasure and pain as the middle link be- 
tween the faculty of knowledge and that of desire — and furnish 
it apriori with principles which shall be for themselves consti- 
tutive and not simply regulative : this is the point upon which 
the Critick of the Faculty of Judgment has to turn. 

The faculty of judgment is the middle link between the un- 
derstanding as the faculty of conceptions, and the reason as the 
faculty of principles. In this position it has the following func- 
tions : The speculative reason had taught us to consider the world 
only according to natural laws ; the practical reason had inferred 
for us a moral world, in which every thing is determined through 
freedom. There was thus a gulf between the kingdom of nature 
and that of freedom, which could not be passed unless the faculty 
of judgment should furnish a conception which should unite the 
two sides. That it is entitled to do this lies in the very concep- 
tion of the faculty of judgment. Since it is the faculty of con- 
ceiving the particular as contained under the universal, it thus 
refers the empirical manifoldness of nature to a supersensible, 
transcendental principle, which embraces in itself the ground for 
the unity of the manifold. The object of the faculty of judg- 
ment is, therefore, the conception of design in nature ; for the 
evidence of this points to that supersensible unity which contains 
the ground for the actuality of an object. And since all design 
and every actualization of an end is connected with pleasure, we 
may farther explain the faculty of judgment by saying, that it 
contains the laws for the feeling of pleasure and pain. 



KANT. 263 

The evidence of design in nature can be represented either 
subjectively or objectively. In the first case I perceive pleasure 
and pain, immediately through the representation of an object, 
before I have formed a conception of it ; my delight, in this in- 
stance, can only be referred to a designed harmony of relation, 
between the form of an object, and my faculty of beholding. 
The faculty of judgment viewed thus subjectively, is called the 
cEsthetic faculty^ In the second case, I form to myself at the 
outset, a conception of the object, and then judge whether the 
form of the object corresponds to this conception. In order to 
find a flower that is beautiful to my beholding, I do not need to 
have a conception of the flower ; but, if I would see a design in 
it, then a conception is necessary. The faculty of judgment, 
viewed as capacity to judge of these objective designs, is called 
the ieleological faculty, 

1. Critick of the Esthetic Faculty of Judgment. (1.) 
Analytic, — The analytic of the assthetic faculty of judgment is 
divided into two parts, the analytic of the beautiful^ and the an- 
alytic of the sublime. 

In order to discover what is required in naming an object 
heautifulj we must analyze the judgment of taste, as the faculty 
for deciding upon the beautiful, (a) In respect of quality, the 
beautiful is the object of a pure, uninterested satisfaction. This 
disinterestedness enables us to distinguish between the satisfac- 
tion in the beautiful, and the satisfaction in the agreeable and the 
good. In the agreeable and the good I am interested ; my satis- 
faction in the agreeable is connected with a sensation of desire ; 
my satisfaction in the good is, at the same time, a motive for my 
will to actualize it. My satisfaction in the beautiful alone is 
without interest. (5) In respect of quantity, the beautiful is that 
which universally pleases. In respect of the agreeable, every 
one decides that his satisfaction in it is only a personal one ; but 
if any one should affirm of a picture, that it is beautiful, he 
would expect that not only he, but every other one, would also 
find it so. Nevertheless, this judgment of the taste does not 
arise from conceptions ; its universal validity is therefore purely 



264 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



J 



subjective. I do not judge that all the objects of a species are 
beautiful, but only that a certain specific object will appear beau- 
tiful to every beholder. All the judgments of taste are indi- 
vidual judgments, (c) In respect of relation, that is beautiful 
in which we find the form of design, without representing to our- 
selves any specific design, {d) In respect of modality, that is 
beautiful which is recognized without a conception, as the object 
of a necessary satisfaction. Of every representation, it is at least 
possible, that it may awaken pleasure. The representation of the 
agreeable awakens actual pleasure. The representation of the 
beautiful, on the other hand, awakens pleasure necessarily. The 
necessity which is conceived in an aesthetic judgment, is a neces- 
sity for determining every thing by a judgment, which can be 
viewed as an example of a universal rule, though the rule itself 
cannot be stated. The subjective principle which lies at the basis 
of the judgment of taste, is therefore a common sense, which de- 
termines what is pleasing, and what displeasing, only through 
feeling, and not through conception. 

The sublime is that which is absolutely, or beyond all com- 
parison, great, compared with which every thing else is small. 
But now in nature there is nothing which has no greater. The 
absolutely great is only the infinite, and the infinite is only to be 
met with in ourselves, as idea. The sublime, therefore, is not 
properly found in nature, but is only carried over to nature from 
our own minds. We call that sublime in nature, which awakens 
within us the idea of the infinite. As in the beautiful there is 
prominent reference to quality, so, in the sublime, the most im- 
portant element of all, is quantity ; and this quantity is either 
greatness of extension (the mathematically sublime), or greatness 
of power (the dynamically sublime). In the sublime there is a 
greater satisfaction in the formless, than in the form. The sub- 
lime excites a vigorous movement of the heart, and awakens 
pleasure only through pain, i, e. through the feeling that the 
energies of life are for the moment restrained. The satisfaction 
in the sublime is hence not so much a positive pleasure, but rather 
an amazement and awe, which may be called a negative pleasure. 



II 



KANT. 265 

The elements for an aesthetic judgment of the sublime are the 
same as in the feeling of the beautiful, {a) In respect of quan- 
tity, that is sublime which is absolutely great, in comparison with 
which every thing else is small. The sesthetic estimate of great- 
ness does not lie, however, in numeration, but in the simple in- 
tuition of the subject. The greatness of an object of nature, 
which the imagination attempts in vain to comprehend, leads to a 
supersensible substratum, which is great beyond all the measures 
of the sense, and which has reference properly to the feeling of 
the sublime. It is not the object itself, as the surging sea, which 
is sublime, but rather the subject's frame of mind, in the estima- 
tion of this object. (6) In respect of quality, the sublime does 
not awaken pure pleasure, like the beautiful, but first pain, and 
through this, pleasure. The feeling of the insufficiency of our 
imagination, in the aesthetic estimate of greatness, gives rise to 
pain ; but, on the other side, the consciousness of our independ- 
ent reason, for which the faculty of imagination is inadequate, 
awakens pleasure. In this respect, therefore, that is sublime 
which immediately pleases us, through its opposition to the in- 
terest of the sense, (c) In respect of relation, the sublime suf- 
fers nature to appear as a power, indeed, but in reference to 
which, we have the consciousness of superiority, (d) In respect 
of modality, the judgments concerning the sublime are as neces- 
sarily valid, as those for the beautiful ; only with this difference, 
that our judgment of the sublime finds an entrance to some 
minds, with greater difficulty than our judgment of the beautiful, 
since to perceive the sublime, culture, and developed moral ideas, 
are necessary. 

(2.) Dialectic, — A dialectic of the aesthetic faculty of judg- 
ment, like every dialectic, is only possible where we can meet 
with judgments which lay claim to universality apriori. For dia- 
lectics consists in the opposition of such judgments. The anti- 
nomy of the principles of taste rests upon the two opposite ele- 
ments of the judgment of taste, that it is purely subjective, and 
at the same time, lays claim to universal validity. Hence, the 
two common-place sayings : ^' there is no disputing about taste," 
12 



266 . A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and " there is a contest of taste." From these, we have the fol- 
lowing antinomy, {a) Thesis : the judgment of taste cannot be 
grounded on conception, else might we dispute it. (6) Antithe- 
sis : the judgment of taste must be grounded on conception, else, 
notwithstanding its diversity, there could be no contest respecting 
it. — This antinomy, says Kant, is, however, only an apparent one, 
and disappears as soon as the two propositions are more accu- 
rately apprehended. The thesis should be : the judgment of 
taste is not grounded upon a definite conception, and is not 
strictly demonstrable ; the antithesis should be : this judgment is 
grounded upon a conception, though an indefinite one, viz., upon 
the conception of a supersensible substratum for the phenomenal. 
Thus apprehended, there is no longer any contradiction between 
the two propositions. 

In the conclusion of the aesthetic faculty of judgment, we 
can now answer the question, whether the fitness of things to our 
faculty of judgment (their beauty and sublimity), lies in the 
things themselves, or in us ? The aesthetic realism claims that 
the supreme cause of nature designed to produce things which 
should afi*ect our imagination, as beautiful and sublime, and the 
organic forms of nature strongly support this view. But on the 
other hand, nature exhibits even in her merely mechanical forms, 
such a tendency to the beautiful, that we might believe that she 
could produce also the most beautiful organic forms through me- 
chanism alone ; and that thus the design would lie not in nature, 
but in our soul. This is the standpoint of idealism, upon which 
it becomes explicable how we can determine any thing apriori 
concerning beauty and sublimity. But the highest view of the 
aesthetical, is to use it as a symbol of the moral good. Thus 
Kant makes the theory of taste, like religion, to be a corollary of 
morality. 

2. Critick of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment. — In 
the foregoing, we have considered the subjective aesthetical design 
in the objects of nature. But the objects of nature have also a 
relation of design to each other. The teleological faculty of 
judgment has also to consider this faculty of design. 



KANT. 267 

(1.) Analytic of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment. — The 
analytic has to determine the kinds of objective design. Objec- 
tive, material design, is of two kinds, external, and internal. The 
external design is only relative, since it simply indicates a useful- 
ness of one thing for another. Sand, for instance, which borders 
the sea shore, is of use in bearing pine forests. In order that 
animals can live upon the earth, the earth must produce nourish- 
ment for them, etc. These examples of external design, show 
that here the design never belongs to the means in itself, but only 
accidentally. We should never get a conception of the sand by 
saying that it is a means for pine forests ; it is conceivable for it- 
self, without any reference to the conception of design. The 
earth does not produce nourishment, because it is necessary that 
men should dwell upon it. In brief, this external or relative de- 
sign may be conceived from the mechanism of nature alone. 
Not so the inner design of nature, which shows itself prominently 
in the organic products of nature. In an organic product of na- 
ture, every one of its parts is end, and every one, means or in- 
strument. In the process of generation, the natural product ap- 
pears as species, in growth it appears as individual, and in the 
process of complete formation, every part of the individual shows 
itself This natural organism cannot be explained from mechani- 
cal causes, but only through final causes, or teleologically. 

(2.) Dialectic, — The dialectic of the teleological faculty of 
judgment, has to adjust this opposition between this mechanism 
of nature and teleology. On the one side we have the thesis : 
every production of material things must be judged as possible, 
according to simple mechanical laws. On the other side we have 
the antithesis : certain products of material nature cannot be 
judged as possible, according to simple mechanical laws, but de- 
mand the conception of design for their explanation. If these 
two maxims are posited as constitutive (objective) principles for 
the possibility of the objects themselves, then do they contradict 
each other, but as simply regulative (subjective) principles for 
the investigation of nature, they are not contradictory. Earlier 
systems treated the conception of design in nature dogmatically. 



268 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and either affirmed or denied its essential existence in nature. 
But we, convinced that teleology is only a regulative principle, 
have nothing to do with the question whether an inner design be- 
longs essentially to nature or not, hut we only affirm that our 
faculty of judgment must look upon nature as designed. We 
envisage the conception of design in nature, but leave it wholly 
undecided whether to another understanding, which does not 
think discursively like ours, nature may not be understood, with- 
out at all needing to bring in this conception of design. Our un- 
derstanding thinks discursively : it proceeds from the parts, and 
comprehends the whole as the product of its parts ; it cannot, 
therefore, conceive the organic products of nature, where the 
whole is the ground and the prius of the parts, except from the 
point of view of the conception of design. If there were, on the 
other hand, an intuitive understanding, which could know the 
particular and the parts as co-determined in the universal and 
the whole ; such an understanding might conceive the whole of 
nature out of one principle, and would not need the conception 
of end. 

If Kant had thoroughly carried out this conception of an in- 
tuitive understanding as well as the conception of an immanent 
design in nature, he would have overcome, in principle, the stand- 
point of subjective idealism, which he made numerous attempts, in 
his critick of the faculty of judgment, to break through ; but these 
ideas he only propounded, and left them to be positively carried 
out by his successors. 



SECTION XXXIX. 

TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 

The Kantian philosophy soon gained in Germany an almost 
undisputed rule. The imposing boldness of its standpoint, the 
novelty of its results, the applicability of its principles, the moral 



TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 269 

severity of its view of the world, and above all, tlie spirit of free- 
dom and moral autonomy which appeared in it, and which was so 
directly counter to the eflForts of that age, gained for it an assent 
as enthusiastic as it was extended. It aroused among all culti- 
vated classes a wider interest and participation in philosophic 
pursuits, than had ever appeared in an equal degree among any 
people. In a short time it had drawn to itself a very numerous 
school : there were soon few German universities in which it had 
not had its talented representatives, while in every department of 
science and literature, especially in theology (it is the parent of 
theological rationalism), and in natural rights, as also in belles- 
lettres (Schiller)^ it began to exert its influence. Yet most of the 
writers who appeared in the Kantian school, confined themselves 
to an exposition or popular application of the doctrine as Kant 
had given it, and even the most talented and independent among 
the defenders and improvers of the critical philosophy [e, g, 
Reinhold, 1758-1823 ; Bardili, 1761-1808 ; Schulze, Bech, 
FrieSy Krug^ Bouterwech)^ only attempted to give a firmer basis 
to the Kantian philosophy as they had received it, to obviate 
some of its wants and deficiencies, and to carry out the standpoint 
of transcendental idealism more purely and consistently. Among 
those who carried out the Kantian philosophy, only two men, 
Fichte and Herhart^ can be named, who made by their actual 
advance an epoch in philosophy ; and among its opposers {e, g, 
Hamann^ Herder)^ only one, Jacobi^ is of philosophic importance. 
These three philosophers are hence the first objects for us to con- 
sider. In order to a more accurate development of their princi- 
ples, we preface a brief and general characteristic of their relation 
to the Kantian philosophy. 

1. Dogmatism had been critically annihilated by Kant ; his 
Critick of pure Reason had for its result the theoretical inde- 
monstrableness of the three ideas of the reason, God, freedom, and 
immortality. True, these ideas which, from the standpoint of 
theoretical knowledge, had been thrust out, Kant had introduced 
again as postulates of the practical reason ; but as postulates, as 
only practical premises, they possess no theoretic certainty, and 



270 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

remain exposed to doubt. In order to do away with this uncer- 
tainty, and this despairing of knowledge which had seemed to be 
the end of the Kantian philosophy, Jacobi^ a younger cotempo- 
rary of Kant, placed himself upon the standpoint of the faith 
philosophy in opposition to the standpoint of criticism. Though 
these highest ideas of the reason, the eternal and the divine, can- 
not be reached and proved by means of demonstration, yet is it 
the very essence of the divine that it is indemonstrable and unat- 
tainable for the understanding. In order to be certain of the 
highest, of that which lies beyond the understanding, there is only 
one organ, viz., feeling. In feeling, therefore, in immediate know- 
ledge, in faith, Jacobi thought he had found that certainty which 
Kant had sought in vain on the basis of discursive thinking. 

2. While Jacobi stood in an antithetic relation to the Kan- 
tian philosophy, Fichte appears as its immediate consequence. 
Fichte carried out to its consequence the Kantian dualism, ac- 
cording to which the Ego, as theoretic, is subjected to the external 
world, while as practical, it is its master, or, in other words, ac- 
cording to which the Ego stands related to the objective world, 
now receptively and again spontaneously. He allowed the reason 
to be exclusively practical, as will alone, and spontaneity alone, 
and apprehended its theoretical and receptive relation to the ob- 
jective world as only a circumscribed activity, as a limitation 
prescribed to itself by the reason. But for the reason, so far as 
it is practical, there is nothing objective except as it is produced. 
The will knows no being but only an ought. Hence the objec- 
tive being of truth is universally denied, and the thing which is 
essentially unknown must fall away of itself as an empty shadow. 
*' Every thing which is, is the Ego," is the principle of the 
Fichtian system, and represents at the same time the subjective 
idealism in its consequence and completion. 

3. While the subjective idealism of Fichte was carried out in 
the objective idealism of Schelling, and the absolute idealism of 
Hegel, there arose cotemporaneously with these systems a third 
offshoot of the Kantian criticism, viz., the philosophy of JETer&art 
It had its subjective origin in the Kantian philosophy, but its ob- 



JACOBI. 271 

jective and historic connection with Kant is slight. It breaks up 
all historic continuity, and holds an isolated position in the histo- 
ry of philosophy. Its general basis is Kantian, in so far as it 
makes for its problem a critical investigation of the subjective 
experience. We place it between Fichte and Schelling. 



SECTION XL. 

JACOBI. 

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Diisseldorf in 1743. 
His father destined him for a merchant. After he had studied 
in Geneva and become interested in philosophy, he entered his 
father's mercantile establishment, but afterwards abandoned this 
business, having been made chancellor of the exchequer and 
customs commissioner for Cleves and Berg, and also privy 
councillor at Diisseldorf. In this city, or at his neighboring 
estate of Pempelfort, he spent a great part of his life devoted to 
philosophy and his friends. In the year 1804 he was called to 
the newly-formed Academy of Sciences in Munich. In 1807 he 
was chosen president of this institution, a post which he filled 
till his death in 1819. Jacobi had a rich intellect and an amiable 
character. Besides being a philosopher, he was also a poet and 
citizen of the world ; and hence we find in his philosophizing an 
absence of strict logical arrangement and precise expression of 
thought. His writings are no systematic whole, but are occasional 
treatises written " rhapsodically and in grasshopper gait," for the 
most part in the form of letters, dialogues, and romances. " It 
was never my purpose," he says himself, " to set up a system for 
the schools. My writings have sprung from my innermost life, 
and were the result of that which had taken place within me. 
In a certain sense I did not make them voluntarily, but they 
were drawn out of me by a higher power irresistible to myself." 
This want of an inner principle of classification and of a syste- 



272 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

matic arrangement, renders a development of Jacobi's philosophy 
not easy. It may best be represented under the following three 
points of view : — 1. Jacobi's polemic against mediate knowledge. 
2. His principle of immediate knowledge. 3. His relation to the 
cotemporaneous philosophy, especially to the Kantian criticism. 

1. Spinoza was the negative starting point of Jacobi's phi- 
losophizing. In his work '^ On the Doctrine of Spinoza^ in 
letters to Moses Mendelssohn'''' (1785), he directed public attention 
again to the almost wholly forgotten philosophy of Spinoza. The 
correspondence originated thus : Jacobi made the discovery 
that Lessing was a Spinozist, and announces this to Mendelssohn. 
The latter will not believe it, and thence grew the farther his- 
torical and philosophical examination. The positive philosophic 
views which Jacobi exhibits in this treatise can be reduced to the 
following three principles : (1) Spinozism is fatalism and atheism. 
(2) Every path of philosophic demonstration leads to fatalism 
and atheism. (3) In order that we may not fall into these, we 
must set a limit to demonstrating, and recognize faith as the 
element of all metaphysic knowledge. 

(1.) Spinozism is atheism, because, according to it, the cause 
of the world is no person — is no being working for an end, and 
endowed with reason and will — and hence is no God. It is fatal- 
ism, for, according to it, the human will regards itself only falsely 
as free. 

(2.) This atheism and fatalism is, however, only the necessary 
consequence of all strictly demonstrative philosophizing. To 
conceive a thing, says Jacobi, is to refer a thing to its nearest 
cause ; it is to find a possible for an actual, the condition for a 
conditioned, the mediation for an immediate. We conceive only 
that which we can explain out of another. Hence our conceiving 
moves in a chain of conditioned conditions, and this connection 
forms a mechanism of nature, in whose investigation our under- 
standing has its immeasurable field. However far we may carry 
conception and demonstration, we must hold, in reference to every 
object, to a still higher one which conditions it ; where this chain 
of the conditioned ceases, there do conception and demonstration 



jAcoBi. 273 

also cease ; till we give up demonstrating we can reach no infinite. 
If philosophy determines to apprehend the infinite with the finite 
understanding, then must it bring down the divine to the finite ; 
and here is where every preceding philosophy has been entangled, 
while it is obviously an absurd undertaking to attempt to discover 
the conditions of the unconditioned, and make the absolutely 
necessary a possible, in order that we may be able to construct it. 
A God who could be proved is no God, for the ground of proof is 
ever above that which is to be proved ; the latter has its whole 
reality from the former. If the existence of God should be 
proved, then God would be derived from a ground which were 
before and above him. Hence the paradox of Jacobi ; it is for 
the interest of science that there be no God, no supernatural and 
no extra or supramundane being. Only upon the condition that 
nature alone is, and is therefore independent and all in all, can 
science hope to gain its goal of perfection, and become, like its 
object itself, all in all. Hence the result which Jacobi derives 
from the " Drama of the history of philosophy " is this : — " There 
is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza. He who considers 
all the works and acts of men to be the effect of natural mechan- 
ism, and who believes that intelligence is but an accompanying 
consciousness, which has only to act the part of a looker-on, 
cannot be contended with and cannot be helped till we set him 
free from his philosophy. No philosophical conclusion can reach 
him, for what he denies cannot be philosophically proved, and 
what he proves cannot be philosophically denied." Whence then 
is help to come ? " The understanding, taken by itself, is ma- 
terialistic and irrational ; it denies spirit and God. The reason 
taken by itself is idealistic, and has nothing to do with the under- 
standing; it denies nature and makes itself God." 

(3.) Hence we must seek another way of knowing the supersen- 
sible, which is faith. Jacobi calls this flight from cognition through 
conception to faith, the salio mortale of the human reason. Every 
certainty through a conception demands another certainty, but in 
faith we are led to an immediate certainty which needs no ground 
nor proof, and which is in fact absolutely exclusive of all proof. 
12* 



274 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Such a confidence wliicli does not arise from arguments, is called 
faith. We know the sensible as well as the supersensible only 
through faith. All human knowledge springs from revelation and 
faith. 

These principles which Jacobi brought out in his letters con- 
cerning Spinoza, did not fail to arouse a universal opposition in 
the German philosophical world. It was charged upon him that 
he was an enemy of reason, a preacher of blind faith, a despiser 
of science and of philosophy, a fanatic and a papist. To rebut 
these attacks, and to justify his standpoint, he wrote in 1787, a 
year and a half after the first appearance of the work already 
named, his dialogue entitled " David Hume^ or Faith ^ Idealism^ 
and Bealism,^^ in which he developes more extensively and defi- 
nitely his principle of faith or immediate knowledge. 

2. Jacobi distinguished his faith at the outset from a blind 
credence in authority. A blind faith is that which supports it- 
self on a foreign view, instead of on the grounds of reason. But 
this is not the case with his faith, which rather rests upon 
the innermost necessity of the subject itself. Still farther : his 
faith is not an arbitrary imagination : we can imagine to our- 
selves every thing possible, but in order to regard a thing as 
actual, there must be an inexplicable necessity of our feeling, 
which we cannot otherwise name than faith. Jacobi was not con- 
stant in his terminology, and hence did not always express him- 
self alike in respect of the relation in which faith stood to the 
different sides of the human faculty of knowledge. In his earlier 
terminology he placed faith (or as he also called it, the power of 
faith), on the side of the sense or the receptivity, and let it stand 
opposed to the understanding and the reason, taking these two 
terms as equivalent expressions for the finite and immediate know- 
ledge of previous philosophy ; afterwards he followed Kant, and, 
distinguishing between the reason and the understanding, he 
called that reason which he had previously named sense and faith. 
According to him now, the faith or intuition of the reason is the 
organ for perceiving the supersensible. As such, it stands op- 
posed to the understanding. There must be a higher facult}^ 



jAcoBi. 275 

whicli can learn, in a way inconceivable to sense and the under- 
standing, that which is true in and above the phenomena. Over 
against the explaining understanding stands the reason, or the 
natural faith of the reason, which does not explain, but positively 
reveals and unconditionally decides. As there is an intuition of 
the sense, so is there a rational intuition through the reason, and 
a demonstration has no more validity in respect of the latter than 
in respect of the former. Jacobi justifies his use of the term, in- 
tuition of the reason, from the want of any other suitable designa- 
tion. Language has no other expression to indicate the way in 
which that, which is unattainable to the sense, becomes appre- 
hended in the transcendental feeling. If any one affirms that he 
knows any thing, he may properly be required to state the origin 
of his knowledge, and in doing this, he must of necessity go back 
either to sensation or to feeling ; the latter stands above the 
former as high as the human species above the brute. So I 
affirm, then, without hesitation, says Jacobi, that my philosophy 
starts from pure feeling, and declares the authority of this to be 
supreme. The faculty of feeling is the highest in man, and that 
alone which specifically distinguishes him from the brute. This 
faculty is one and the same with reason ; or, reason may be said 
to find in it its single and only starting point. 

Jacobi had the clearest consciousness of the opposition in 
which he stood, with this principle of immediate knowledge, to 
previous philosophy. In his introduction to his complete works, 
he says : " There had arisen since the time of Aristotle an in- 
creasing effort in philosophical schools, to subject the immediate 
knowledge to the mediate, to make that faculty of perception which 
originally establishes every thing, dependent on the faculty of re- 
flection, which is conditioned through abstraction ; to subordinate 
the archetype to the copy, the essence to the word, the reason to 
the understanding, and, in fact, to make the former wholly disap- 
pear in the latter. Nothing is allowed to be true which is not 
capable of a double demonstration, in the intuition and in the 
conception, in the thing and in its image or word ; the thing it- 
self, it is said, must truly lie and actually be known only in the 



276 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

word." But every philosopliy whieli allows only the reflecting 
reason, must lose itself at length in an utter ignorance. Its end 
is nihilism. 

3. From what has been already said, the position of Jacobi 
with his principle of faith, in relation to the Kantian philosophy, 
can, partly at least, be seen. Jacobi had separated himself from 
this philosophy, partly in the above-named dialogue ^' David 
Hume," (especially in an appendix to this, in which he discussed 
the tran&cendental Idealism), and partly in his essay " On the 
aitempt of criticism to bring the reason to the understanding " 
(1801). His relation to it may be reduced to the following three 
general points : 

(1.) Jacobi does not agree with Kant's theory of sensuous 
knowledge. In opposition to this theory he defends the stand- 
point of empiricism, affirms the truthfulness of the sense-percep- 
tion, and denies the apriority of space and time, for which Kant con- 
tends in order to prove that objects as well as their relations are 
simply determinations of our own self, and do not at all exist ex- 
ternally to us. For, however much it may be affirmed that there 
is something corresponding to our notions as their cause, yet does 
it remain concealed what this something is. According to Kant, 
the laws of our beholding and thinking are without objective 
validity, our knowledge has no objective significance. But it is 
wrong to claim that in the phenomena there is nothing revealed 
of the hidden truth which lies behind them. With such a claim, 
it were far better to give up completely the unknown thing-in- 
itself, and carry out to its results the consequent idealism. ^^ Logi- 
cally, Kant is at fault, when he presupposes objects which make 
impressions on our soul. He is bound to teach the strictest 
idealism. 

(2.) Yet Jacobi essentially agrees with Kant's critick of the un- 
derstanding. Jacobi affirmed, as Kant had done, that the under- 
standing is insufficient to know the supersensible, and that the 
highest ideas of the reason could be apprehended only in faith. 
Jacobi places Kant's great merit in having cleared away the ideas, 
which were simply the products of reflection and logical phan- 



jAcoBi. 277 

tasms. ^' It is very easy for the understanding, when producing 
one notion from another, and thus gradually mounting up to 
ideas, to imagine that, by virtue of these, which, though they 
carry it beyond the intuitions of the sense, are nothing but logi- 
cal phantasms, it has not only the faculty but the most decided 
determination to fly truly above the world of sense, and to gain 
by its flight a higher science independent of the intuition, a sci- 
ence of the supersensible. Kant discovers and destroys this er- 
ror and self-deception. Thus there is gained, at least, a clear 
place for a genuine rationalism. This is Kant's truly great deed^ 
his immortal merit. But the sound sense of our sage did not al- 
low him to hide from himself that this clear place must disappear 
in a gulf, which would swallow up in itself all knowledge of the 
true, unless a God should interpose to hinder it. Here Kant's 
doctrine and mine meet." 

(3.) But Jacobi does not fully agree with Kant, in wholly 
denying to the theoretical reason the faculty of objective knowl- 
edge. He blames Kant for complaining that the human reason 
cannot theoretically prove the reality of its ideas. He affirms 
that Kant is thus still entangled in the delusion, that the only 
reason why these ideas cannot be proved, is found in the nature 
of the ideas themselves, and not in the deficient nature of our 
knowledge. Kant therefore attempts to seek, in a practical way, 
a kind of scientific proof; a roundabout way, which, to every 
profound seeker, must seem folly, since every proof is as impossi- 
ble as it is unnecessary. 

Jacobi agreed better with Kant, than with the post-Kantian 
philosophy. The atheistic tendency of the latter was especially 
repulsive to him, "To Kant, that profound thinker and upright 
philosopher, the words God, freedom, immortality, and religion, 
signified the same as they have ever done to the sound human 
understanding ; he in no way treats them as nothing but decep- 
tion. He created ofi'ence by irresistibly showing the insufficiency 
of all proofs of speculative philosophy for these ideas. That 
which was wanting in the theoretical proof, he made up by the 
necessary postulates of a pure practical reason. With these, ac- 



278 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cording to Kant's assurance, philosophy was fully helped out of 
her difficulty, and the goal, which had been always missed, actu- 
ally reached. But the first daughter of the critical philosophy 
(Fichte's system) makes the living and working moral order it- 
self to be God, a God expressly declared to be without conscious- 
ness and self-existence. These frank words, spoken publicly and 
without restraint, roused some attention, but the fear soon sub- 
sided. Presently astonishment ceased wholly, for the second 
daughter of the critical philosophy (Schelling's system) gave up 
entirely the distinction which the first had allowed to remain be- 
tween natural and moral philosophy, necessity and freedom, and 
without any further ado affirmed that the only existence is na- 
ture, and that there is nothing above ; this second daughter is 
Spinozism transfigured and reversed, an ideal materialism." This 
latter allusion to Schelling, connected as it was with other and 
harder thrusts in the same essay, called out from this philosopher 
the well-known answer : " Schelling'' s Monument to the Treatise 
on Divine Things^ 1812." 

If we now take a critical survey of the philosophical stand- 
point of Jacobi, we shall find its peculiarity to consist in the ab- 
stract separation of understanding and feeling. These two Ja- 
cobi could not bring into harmony. " There is light in my 
heart," he says, " but it goes out whenever I attempt to bring it 
into the understanding. Which is the true luminary of these 
two ? That of the understanding, which, though it reveals fixed 
forms, shows behind them only a baseless gulf ? Or that of the 
heart, which points its light promisingly upwards, though deter- 
minate knowledge escapes it ? Can the human spirit grasp the 
truth unless it possesses these two luminaries united in one light ? 
And is this union conceivable except through a miracle ? " If 
now, in order to escape in a certain degree this contradiction be- 
tween understanding and feeling, Jacobi gave to immediate 
knowledge the place of mediate as finite knowledge, this was a 
self-deception. Even that knowledge, which is supposed to be 
immediate, and which Jacobi regards as the peculiar organ for 
knowing the supersensible, is also mediate, obliged to go through 



FICHTE. 279 

a course of subjective mediations, and can only give itself out as 
immediate when it wholly forgets its own origin. 



SECTION XLI. 

FICHTE 

JoHANN Gottlieb Fichte was born at Eammenau, in Upper 
Lusatia, 1762. A nobleman of Silesia became interested in the 
boy, and having committed him first to the instruction of a 
clergyman, he afterwards placed him at the high school at Schulp- 
forte. In his eighteenth year, at Michaelmas, 1780, Fichte 
entered the university at Jena to study theology. He soon found 
himself attracted to philosophy, and became powerfully affected 
by the study of Spinoza. His pecuniary circumstances were 
straitened, but this only served to harden his will and his energy. 
In 1784 he became employed as a teacher in a certain family, 
and spent some time in this occupation with different families in 
Saxony. In 1787 he sought a place as country clergyman, but 
was refused on account of his religious opinions. He was now 
obliged to leave his fatherland, to which he clung with his whole 
soul. He repaired to Zurich, where, in 1788, he took a post as 
private tutor, and where also he became acquainted with his 
future wife, a sister's daughter of Klopstock. At Easter, 1790, 
he returned to Saxony and taught privately at Leipsic, where he 
became acquainted with the Kantian philosophy, by means of 
lessons which he was obliged to give to a student. In the spring 
of 1791 we find him as private tutor at "Warsaw, and soon after 
in Konigsberg, where he resorted, that he might become personally 
acquainted with the Kant he had learned to revere. Instead of 
a letter of recommendation he presented him his " Critick of all 
Revelation^'''' a treatise which Fichte composed in eight days. 
In this he attempted to deduce, from the practical reason, the 
possibility of a revelation. This is not seen purely apriori, but 



280 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

only under an empirical condition ; we must consider liumanit;^ 
to be in a moral ruin so complete, that the moral law has lost all 
its influence upon the will and all morality is extinguished. In 
such a case we may expect that God, as moral governor of the 
world, would give man, through the sense, some pure moral im- 
pulses, and reveal himself as lawgiver to them through a special 
manifestation determined for this end, in the world of sense. In 
such a case a particular revelation were a postulate of the practi- 
cal reason. Fichte sought also to determine apriori the possible 
content of such a revelation. Since we need to know nothing 
but God, freedom, and immortality, the revelation will contain 
naught but these, and these it must contain in a comprehensible 
form, yet so that the symbolical dress may lay no claim to un- 
limited veneration. This treatise, which appeared anonymously 
in 1792, at once attracted the greatest attention, and was at first 
universally regarded as a work of Kant. It procured for its 
author, soon after, a call to the chair of philosophy at Jena, to 
succeed Reinhold, who then went to Kiel. Fichte received this 
appointment in 1793 at Zurich, where he had gone to consummate 
his marriage. At the same time he wrote and published, also 
anonymously, his '^ Aids to correct views of the French Bevolu- 
tioUj^'' an essay which the governments never looked upon with 
favor. At Easter, 1794, he entered upon his new office, and soon 
saw his public call confirmed. Taking now a new standpoint, 
which transcended Kant, he sought to establish this, and carry it 
out in a series of writings (the Wissenschaftslehre appeared in 
1794, the Naturrecht in 1796, and the Sittenlehre in 1798), by 
which he exerted a powerful influence upon the scientific move- 
ment in Germany, aided as he was in this by the fact that Jena 
was then one of the most flourishing of the German universi- 
ties, and the resort of every vigorous head. With Goethe, 
Schiller, the brothers Schlcgcl, William von Humboldt, and 
Hufeland, Fichte was in close fellowship, though this was unfortu- 
nately broken after a few years. In 1795 he became associate 
editor of the ^^Philosophical Journal^'''' which had been established 
by Niethammer. A fellow-laborer, Rector Forberg, at Saalfeld, 



FICHTE. 



28] 



offered for publication in this journal an article ^^ to determine 
the conception of religion." Fichte advised the author not to 
publish it, but at length inserted it in the journal, prefacing it, 
however, with an introduction of his own " On the ground of our 
faith in a divine government of the world ^'' in which he en- 
deavored to remove, or at least soften, the views in the article 
which might give offence. Both the essays raised a great cry of 
atheism. The elector of Saxony confiscated the journal in his 
territory, and sent a requisition to the dukes Ernest, who held 
in common the university of Jena, to summon the author to trial 
and punishment. Fichte answered the edict of confiscation and 
attempted to justify himself to the public (1799), by his " Appeal 
to the Public, An essay ivhich it is requested may he read 
before it is confiscated ;" while he defended his course to the 
government by an article entitled " The Publishers of the Phi- 
losophical Journal justified from the charge of Atheism^ The 
government of Weimar, being as anxious to spare him as it was 
to please the elector of Saxony, delayed its decision. But as 
Fichte, either with or without reason, had privately learned that 
the whole matter was to be settled by reprimanding the accused 
parties for their want of caution ; and, desiring either a civil 
acquittal or an open and proper satisfaction, he wrote a private 
letter to a member of the government, in which he desired his 
dismission in case of a reprimand, and which he closed with the 
intimation that many of his friends would leave the university 
with him, in order to establish together a new one in Germany. 
The government regarded this letter as an application for his dis- 
charge, indirectly declaring that the reprimand was unavoidable. 
Fichte, now an object of suspicion, both on account of his religious 
and political views, looked about him in vain for a place of refuge. 
The prince of Budolstadt, to whom he turned, denied him his 
protection, and his arrival in Berlin (1799) attracted great notice. 
In Berlin, where he had much intercourse with Frederick Schlegel, 
and also with Schleiermacher and Novalis, his views became 
gradually modified ; the catastrophe at Jena had led him from 
the exclusive moral standpoint which he, resting upon Kant, had 



282 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hitherto held, to the sphere of religion ; he now sought to recon- 
cile religion with his standpoint of the Wissenshaftslehrej and 
turned himself to a certain mysticism (the second form of the 
Fichtian theory). After he had privately taught a number of 
years in Berlin, and had also held philosophical lectures for men 
of culture, he was recommended (1805) by Beyme and Altenstein, 
chancellor of state of Hardenberg, to a professorship of philo- 
sophy in Erlangen, an appointment which he received together 
with a permit to return to Berlin in the winter, and hold there 
his philosophical lectures before the public. Thus, in the winter 
of 1807-8, while a French marshal was governor of Berlin, and 
while his voice was often drowned by the hostile tumults of the 
enemy through the streets, he delivered his famous " Addresses to 
the German nation^ Fichte labored most assiduously for the 
foundation of the Berlin university, for only by wholly trans- 
forming the common education did he believe the regeneration of 
Germany could be secured. As the new university was opened 
1809, he was made in the first year dean of the philosophical 
faculty, and in the second was invested with the dignity of rector. 
In the " war of liberation," then breaking out, Fichte took the 
liveliest participation byword and deed. His wife had contracted 
a nervous fever by her care of the sick and wounded, and though 
she recovered, he fell a victim to the same disease. He died Jan. 
28, 1814, not having yet completed his fifty-second year. 

In the following exposition of Fichte's philosophy, we distin- 
guish between the two internally different periods of his philosophi- 
zing, that of Jena and that of Berlin. The first division will include 
two parts — Fichte's theory of science and his practical philosophy. 

I. The Fichtian Philosophy in its Original Form. 1. 
The Theoretical Philosophy of Fichte, his Wissenschafts- 
LEHRE, or Theory of Science. — It has already been shown (^ 39) 
that the thoroughly-going subjective idealism of Fichte was only 
the logical consequence of the Kantian standpoint. It was wholly 
unavoidable that Fichte should entirely reject the Kantian essen- 
tially thing (thing in itself) ^ which Kant had himself declared to 
be unrecognizable though real, and that he should posit as a 



FICHTE. 283 

proper act of the mind, that external influence which Kant had 
referred to the essentially thing. That the Ego alone is, and that 
which we regard as a limitation of the Ego by external objects, 
is rather the proper self-limitation of the Ego ; this is the grand 
feature of the Fichtian as of every idealism. 

Fichte himself supported the standpoint of this Theory of 
Science as follows : In every experience there is conjointly an 
Ego and a thing, the intelligence and its object. Which of these 
two sides must now be reduced to the other ? If the philosopher 
abstracts the Ego, he has remaining an essentially thing, and must 
then apprehend his representations or sensations as the products 
of this object ; if he abstracts the object, he has remaining an es- 
sentially Ego (an Ego in itself). The former is dogmatism, the 
latter idealism. Both are irreconcilable with each other, and 
there is no third way possible. We must therefore choose be- 
tween the two. In order to decide between the two systems, we 
must note the following : (1) That the Ego appears in conscious- 
ness, wherefore the essentially thing is a pure invention, since 
in consciousness we have only that which is perceived ; (2.) Dog- 
matism must account for the origin of its representation through 
some essentially object, it must start from something which does 
not lie in the consciousness. But the effect of being is only being, 
and not representation. Hence idealism alone can be correct 
which does not start from being, but from intelligence. Accord- 
ing to idealism, intelligence is only active, not passive, because it 
is a first and absolute : and on this account there belongs to it no 
being, but simply an acting. The forms of this acting, the system 
of the necessary mode in which intelligence acts, must be found 
from the essence of intelligence. If we should take the laws of 
intelligence from experience, as Kant did his categories, we fail 
in two respects : (1) We do not see why intelligence must so 
act, nor whether these laws are immanent laws of intelligence ; 
(2) We do not see how the object itself originates. Hence the 
fundamental principles of intelligence, as well as the objective 
world, must be derived from the Ego itself. 

Fichte supposed that in these results he only expressed the 



284 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

true sense of the Kantian philosophy. *' Whatever my system 
may properly be, whether the genuine criticism thoroughly car- 
ried out, as I believe it is, or howsoever it be named, is of no ac- 
count." His system, Fichte affirms, had the same view of the 
matter as Kant's, while the numerous followers of this philosopher 
had wholly mistaken and misunderstood their master's idealism. 
In the second introduction to the Theory of Science (1797), 
Fichte grants to these expounders of the Criticb of pure Reason 
that it contains some passages where Kant would affirm that sen- 
sations must be given to the subject from without as the material 
conditions of objective reality ; but shows that the innumerably 
repeated declarations of the Critick, that there could be no influ- 
ence upon us of a real transcendental object outside of us, cannot 
at all be reconciled with these passages, if any thing other than a 
simple thought be understood as the ground of the sensations. 
" So long," adds Fichte, " as Kant does not expressly declare that 
he derives sensations from an impression of some essentially thing, 
or, to use his terminology, that sensation must be explained from 
a transcendental object existing externally to us : so long will I 
not believe what these expounders tell us of Kant. But if he 
should give such an explanation, I should sooner regard the Crit- 
ick of Pure Reason to be a work of chance than of design." For 
such an explanation the aged Kant did not suffer him long to 
wait. In the Intelligenzhlatt der AUgemeinen LUteratiirzeitung 
(1799), he formally, and with much emphasis, rejects the Fichtian 
improvement of his system, and protests against every interpreta- 
tion of his writings according to the conceit of any mind, while he 
maintains the literal interpretation of his theory as laid down in 
the Critick of Reason. Reinhold remarks upon all this : " Since 
the well known and public explanation of Kant respecting Fichte's 
philosophy, there can be no longer a doubt that Kant himself 
would represent his own system, and desire to have it represented 
by his readers, entirely otherwise than Fichte had represented and 
interpreted it. But from this it irresistibly follows, that Kant 
himself did not regard his system as illogical because it presup- 
posed something external to the subjectivity. Nevertheless, it 



FICHTE. 285 

does not at all follow that Fichte erred when he declared that this 
system, with such a presupposition, must be illogical." So much 
for Eeinhold. That Kant himself did not fail to see this incon- 
clusiveness, is evident from the changes he introduced into the 
second edition of the Critick of Pure Reason, where he suffered 
the idealistic side of his system to fall back decidedly behind the 
empirical. 

From what has been said, we can see the universal standpoint 
of the Theory of Science; the Ego is made a principle, and 
from the Ego every thing else is sought to be derived. It hardly 
needs to be remarked, that by this Ego we are to understand, not 
any individual, but the universal Ego, the universal rationality. 
The Ego and the individual, the pure and the empirical Ego, are 
wholly different conceptions. 

We have still the following preface to make concerning the 
form of the Theory of Science. A theory of science, according 
to Fichte, must posit some supreme principle, from which every 
other must be derived. This supreme principle must be absolute- 
ly, and through itself, certain. If our human knowledge should 
be any thing but fragmentary, there must be such a supreme 
principle. But now, since such a principle does not admit of 
proof, every thing depends upon giving it a trial. Its test and 
demonstration can only be thus gained, viz., if we find a principle 
to which all science may be referred, then is this shown to be a 
fundamental principle. But besides the first fundamental princi- 
ple, there are yet two others to be considered, the one of which is 
unconditioned as to its content, but as to its form, conditioned 
through and derived from the first fundamental principle ; the 
other the reversCe The relation of these three principles to each 
other is, in fine, this, viz., that the second stands opposed to the 
first, while a third is the product of the two. Hence, according 
to this plan, the first absolute principle starts from the Ego, the 
second opposes to the Ego a thing or a non-Ego, and the third 
brings forward the Ego again in reaction against the thing or the 
non-Ego. This method of Fichte (thesis, — antithesis, — synthesis) 
is the same as Hegel subsequently adopted, and applied to the 



286 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

whole system of philosophy, a union of the synthetical and ana- 
lytical methods. We start with a fundamental synthesis, which 
we analyze to produce its antitheses, in order to unite these anti-l j 
theses again through a second synthesis. But in making this 
second synthesis, our analysis discovers still farther antitheses, 
which obliges us therefore to find another synthesis, and so on- 
ward in the process, till we come at length to antitheses which can 
no longer be perfectly but only approximately connected. 

We stand now upon the threshold of the Theory of Science, 
It is divided into three parts. (1) General principles of a theory 
of science. (2) Principles of theoretical knowledge. (3) Prin- 
ciples of practical science. 

As has already been said, there are three supreme fundamen- 1 1 
tal principles, one absolutely unconditioned, and two relatively 
unconditioned. 

(1.) The ah solutely first and absolutely unconditioned funda- 
mental principle ought to express that act of the mind which lies 
at the basis of all consciousness, and alone makes consciousness 
possible. Such is the principle of identity, A=A. This princi- 
ple remains, and cannot be thought away, though every empirical 
determination be removed. It is a fact of consciousness, and 
must, therefore, be universally admitted : but at the same time it 
is by no means conditioned, like every other empirical fact, but 
unconditioned, because it is a free act. By affirming that this 
principle is certain without any farther ground, we ascribe to our- 
selves the faculty of positing something absolutely. We do not, 
therefore, affirm that A is, but only that if A is, then it is equal 
to A. It is no matter now about the content of the principle, we 
need only regard its form. The principle A=A is, therefore, 
conditioned (hypothetically) as to its content, and unconditioned 
only as to its form and its connection. If we would now have a 
principle unconditioned in its content as well as in its connection, 
we put Ego in the place of A, as we are fully entitled to do, since 
the connection of subject and predicate contained in the judgment 
A=A is posited in the Ego and through the Ego. Hence A=A 
becomes transformed into Ego=Ego. This principle is uncondi- 



II 



FICHTE. 287 

tioned not only as to its connection, but also as to its content. 
While we could not, instead of A=A, say that A is, yet we can 
instead of Ego=Ego, say that Ego is. All the facts of the em- 
pirical consciousness find their ground of explanation in this, viz., 
that before any thing else is posited in the Ego, the Ego itself is 
there. This fact, that the Ego is absolutely posited and grounded 
on itself, is the basis of all acting in the human mind, and shows 
the pure character of activity in itself. The Ego is, because it 
posits itself, and it only is, because this simple positing of itself is 
wholly by itself. The being of the Ego is thus seen in the posi- 
ting of the Ego, and on the other hand, the Ego is enabled to 
posit simply by virtue of its being. It is at the same time the 
acting, and the product of the action. I am, is the expression of 
the only possible deed. Logically considered we have, in the 
first principle of a Theory of Science, A=A, the logical law of 
identity. From the proposition A=A, we arrive at the proposi- 
tion Ego=Ego. The latter proposition, however, does not derive 
its validity from the former, but contrarywise. The prius of all 
judgments is the Ego, which posits the connection of subject and 
predicate. The logical law of identity arises, therefore, from 
Ego=Ego. Metaphysically considered, we have in this same first 
principle of a Theory of Science, the category of reality. We 
obtain this category by abstracting every thing from the content, 
and reflecting simply upon the mode of acting of the human mind. 
From the Ego, as the absolute subject, every category is derived. 
(2.) The second fundamental principle y conditioned in its con- 
tent, and only unconditioned in its form, which is just as incapable 
as the first of demonstration or derivation, is also a fact of the 
empirical consciousness : it is the proposition non-A is not=A. 
This sentence is unconditioned in its form, because it is free act 
like the first, from which it cannot be derived ; but in its content, 
as to its matter it is conditioned, because if a non-A is posited, 
there must have previously been posited an A. Let us examine 
this principle more closely. In the first principle, A=A, the 
form of the act was a positing, while in this second principle it is 
an oppositing. There is an absolute opposition, and this opposi- 



288 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion, in its simple form, is an act absolutely possible, standing un- 
der no condition, limited by no higher ground. But as to its 
matter, the opposition presupposes a position ; the non-A cannot 
be posited without the A. What non-A is, I do not through that 
yet know : I only know concerning non-A that it is the opposite 
of A : hence I only know what non-A is under the condition that 
I know A. But now A is posited through the Ego ; there is 
originally nothing posited but the Ego, and nothing but this abso- 
lutely posited. Hence there can be an absolute opposition only 
to the Ego. That which is opposed to the Ego is the non-Ego. 
A non-Ego is absolutely opposed to the Ego, and this is the second 
fact of the empirical consciousness. In every thing ascribed to 
the Ego, the contrary, by virtue of this simple opposition, must 
be ascribed to the non Ego. — As we obtained from the first prin- 
ciple Ego=Ego, the logical law of identity, so now we have, from 
the second sentence Ego is not = non-Ego, the logical law of con- 
tradiction. And metaphysically, — since we wholly abstract the 
definite act of judgment, and, simply in the form of sequence, con- 
clude not-being from opposite being, — we possess from this second 
principle the category of negaiion, 

(3.) The third principle, conditioned in its form, is almost 
capable of proof, since it is determined by two others. At every 
step we approach the province where every thing can be proved. 
This third principle is conditioned in its form, and unconditioned 
only in its content : i, e. the problem, but not the solution of the 
act to be established through it, has been given through the two 
preceding principles. The solution is afibrded unconditionally 
and absolutely by a decisive word of the reason. The problem to 
be solved by this third principle is this, viz., to adjust the con- 
tradiction contained in the two former ones. On the one side, 
the Ego is wholly suppressed by the non- Ego : there can be no 
positing of the Ego so far as the non-Ego is posited. On the 
other side, the non-Ego is only an Ego posited in the conscious- 
ness, and hence the Ego is not suppressed by the non- Ego. The 
Ego appearing on the one side to be suppressed, is not really sup- 
pressed. Such a result would be non-A=A. In order to remove 



FICHTE. 289 

this contradiction, which threatens to destroy the identity of our 
consciousness, and the only absolute foundation of our knowledge, 
we must find in x that which will justify both of the first two 
principles, and leave the identity of our consciousness undisturbed. 
The two oppo sites, the Ego and the non-Ego, should be united in 
the consciousness, should be alike posited without either excluding 
the other ; they should be received in the identity of the proper 
consciousness. How shall being and not-being, reality and nega- 
tion, be conceived together without destroying each other ? They 
will reciprocally limit each other. Hence the unknown quantity 
a;, whose terms we are seeking, stands for these limits : limitation 
is the sought-for act of the Ego, and as category in the thought, 
we have thus the category of determination or limitation. But 
in limitation, there is also given the category of quantity^ for 
when we say that any thing is limited, we mean that its reality is 
through negation, not loholly^ but only partially suppressed. 
Thus the conception of limit contains also the conception of divisi- 
bility, besides the conceptions of reality and negation. Through 
the act of limitation, the Ego as well as the non-Ego, is posited as 
divisible. Still farther, we see how a logical law follows from the 
third fundamental principle as well as from the first two. If we 
abstract the definite content, the Ego and the non-Ego, and leave 
remaining the simple form of the union of opposites through the 
conception of divisibility, we have then the logical princi;ple of 
the ground^ or foundation, which may be expressed in the formula : 
A in part = non-A, non-A in part = A. Wherever two oppo- 
sites are alike in one characteristic, we consider the ground as a 
ground of relation, and wherever two similar things are opposite 
in one characteristic, we consider the ground as a ground of dis- 
tinction. — With these three principles we have now exhausted the 
measure of that which is unconditioned and absolutely certain. 
We can embrace the three in the following formula : 

I posit in the Ego a divisible non Ego over against the 

divisible Ego, No philosophy can go beyond this cognition, and 

every fundamental philosophy should go back to this. Just so 

far as it does this, it becomes science (Wissenschaftslehre), 

13 



290 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



Every thing wHich can appear in a system of knowledge, as well 
as a farther division of the Theory of Science itself, must be de- 
rived from this. The proposition that the Ego and the non-Ego 
reciprocally limit each other, may be divided into the following 
two : (1) the Ego posits itself as limited through the non-Ego 
(^. e. the Ego is in a cognitive (or passive) relation ) ; (2) the 
Ego posits the non-Ego as limited through the Ego (i. e, the Ego 
is in an active relation). The former proposition is the basis of 
the theoretical, and the latter of the practical part of the Theory 
of Science. The latter part cannot, at the outset, be brought 
upon the stage; for the non-Ego, which should be limited by the 
acting Ego, does not at the outset exist, and we must wait and 
see whether it will find, in the theoretical part, a reality. 

The groundwork of theoretical knowledge advances through 
an uninterrupted series of antitheses and syntheses. The funda- 
mental synthesis of the theoretical Theory of Science is the pro- 
position : the Ego jposits itself as determined (limited) by the 
non-Ego. If we analyze this sentence, we find in it two subordi- 
nate sentences which are reciprocally opposite. (1) The non- 
Ego as active determines the Ego, which thus far is passive ; but 
since all activity must start from the Ego, so (2) the Ego deter- 
mines itself through an absolute activity. Herein is a contradic- 
tion, that the Ego should be at the same time active and passive. 
Since this contradiction would destroy the above proposition, and 
also suppress the unity of consciousness, we are forced to seek 
some point, some new synthesis, in which these given antitheses 
may be united. This synthesis is attained when we find that the 
conceptions of action and passion, which are contained under the 
categories of reality and negation, find their compensation and 
due adjustment in the conception of divisibility. The propo- 
sitions : " the Ego determines," and ^' the Ego is determined," 
are reconciled in the proposition : ^' the Ego determines itself in 
part, and is determined in part." Both, however, should be con- 
sidered as one and the same. Hence more accurately : as many 
parts of reality as the Ego posits in itself, so many parts of nega- 
tion does it posit in the non-Ego ; and as many parts of reality 



II 



II 
II 



FICHTE. 291 

as the Ego posits in the non-Ego, so many parts of negation does 
it posit in itself. This determination is reciprocal determination, 
or reciprocal action. Thus Fichte deduces the last of the three 
categories under Kant's general category of relation. In a simi- 
lar way (viz., by finding a synthesis for apparent contradictions), 
he deduces the two other categories of this class, viz., that of 
cause, and that of substance. The process is thus : So far as the 
Ego is determined, and therefore passive, has the non-Ego reali- 
ty. The category of reciprocal determination, to which we may 
ascribe indifferently either of the two sides, reality or negation, 
may, more strictly taken, imply that the Ego is passive, and the 
non-Ego active. The notion which expresses this relation is that 
of causality. That, to which activity is ascribed, is called cause 
(primal reality), and that to which passiveness is ascribed, is 
called effect; both, conceived in connection, may be termed 
a working. On the other side, the Ego determines itself. Here- 
in is a contradiction; (1) the Ego determines itself; it is there- 
fore that which determines, and is thus active ; (2) it determines 
itself; it is therefore that which becomes determined, and is thus 
passive. Thus in one respect and in one action both reality and 
negation are ascribed to it. To resolve this contradiction, we 
must find a mode of action which is activity and passiveness in 
one ; the Ego must determine its passiveness through activity, 
and its activity through passiveness. This solution is attained by 
aid of the conception of quantity. In the Ego all reality is first 
of all posited as absolute quantum, as absolute totality, and thus 
far the Ego may be compared to a greatest circle which contains 
all the rest. A definite quantum of activity, or a limited sphere 
within this greatest circle of activity, is indeed a reality ; but 
when compared with the totality of activity, is it also a negation 
of the totality or passiveness. Here we have found the media- 
tion sought for ; it lies in the notion of substance. In so far as 
the Ego is considered as the whole circle, embracing the totality 
of all realities, is it substance ; but so far as it becomes posited 
in a determinate sphere of this circle, is it accidental. No acci- 
dence is conceivable without substance ; for, in order to know 



292 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

that any thing is a definite reality, it must first be referred to 
reality in general, or to substance. In every change we think of 
substance in the universal ; accidence is something specific (de- 
terminate), which changes with every changing cause. There is 
originally but one substance^ the Ego ; in this one substance all 
possible accidents, and therefore all possible realities, are posited. 
The Ego alone is the absolutely infinite. The Ego, as thinking 
and as acting, indicates a limitation. The Fichtian theory is ac- 
cordingly Spinozism, only (as Jacobi strikingly called it) a re- 
versed and idealistic Spinozism. 

Let us look back a moment. The objectivity which Kant 
had allowed to exist Fichte has destroyed. There is only the 
Ego. But the Ego presupposes a non-Ego, and therefore a kind 
of object. How the Ego comes to posit such an object, must 
the theoretical Theory of Science now proceed to show. 

There are two extreme views respecting the relation of the 
Ego to the non-Ego, according as we start from the conception 
of cause, or that of substance. (1) Starting from the concep- 
tion of cause, we have posited through the passiveness of the 
Ego an activity of the non-Ego. This passiveness of the Ego 
must have some ground. This cannot lie in the Ego, which in 
itself posits only activity. Consequently it lies in the non-Ego. 
Here the distinction between action and passion is apprehended, 
not simply as quantitative (^. ^., viewing the passiveness as a di- 
minished activity), but the passion is in quality opposed to the 
action ; a presupposed activity of the non-Ego is, therefore, a 
real ground of the passiveness in the Ego. (2) Starting from 
the conception of substance, we have posited a passiveness of the 
Ego through its own activity. Here the passiveness in respect 
of quality is the same as activity, it being only a diminished ac- 
tivity. While, therefore, according to the first view, the passive 
Ego has a ground distinct in quality from the Ego, and thus a 
real ground, yet here its ground is only a diminished activity of 
the Ego, distinct only in quantity from the Ego, and is thus an 
ideal ground. The former view is dogmatic realism, the latter 
lA dogmatic idealism. The latter affirms : all reality of the non- 



FICHTE. 293 

Ego is only a reality given it from the Ego ; the former declares : 
nothing can be given, unless there be something to receive, unless 
an independent reality of the non-Ego, as thing in itself, be pre- 
supposed. Both views present thus a contradiction, which can 
only be removed by a new synthesis. Fichte attempted this syn- 
thesis of idealism and realism, by bringing out a mediating sys- 
tem of critical idealism. For this purpose he sought to show 
that the ideal ground and the real ground are one and the same. 
Neither is the simple activity of the Ego a ground for the reality 
of the non-Ego, nor is the simple activity of the non-Ego a 
ground for the passiveness in the Ego. Both must be conceived 
together in this way, viz., the activity of the Ego meets a hin- 
drance^ which is set up against it, not without some assistance of 
the Ego, and which circumscribes and reflects in itself this activ- 
ity of the Ego. The hindrance is found when the subjective 
can be no farther extended, and the expanding activity of the 
Ego is driven back into itself, producing as its result self-limita- 
tion. What we call objects are nothing other than the different 
impinging of the activity of the Ego on some inconceivable hin- 
drance, and these determinations of the Ego, we carry over to 
something external to ourselves, and represent them to ourselves 
as space filling matter. That which Fichte calls a hindrance 
through the non-Ego, is thus in fact the same as Kant calls thing 
essentially, the only difference being that with Fichte it is made 
subjective. From this point Fichte then deduces the subjective 
activities of the Ego, which mediate, or seek to mediate, theoret- 
ically, the Ego with the non-Ego— as imagination, representation 
(sensation, intuition, feeling), understanding, faculty of judgment, 
reason ; and in connection with this he brought out the subjective 
projections of the intuition, space, and time. 

We have now reached the third part of the Theory of Sci- 
ence, viz., the foundation of the ^practical. We have seen that 
the Ego represents. But that it may represent does not depend 
upon the Ego alone, but is determined by something external to 
it. We could in no way conceive of a representation, except 
through the presupposition that the Ego finds some hindrance to 



294 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

its undetermined and unlimited activity. Accordingly the Ego, 
as intelligence, is universally dependent upon an indefinite, and 
hitherto wholly indefinable non-Ego, and only through and by 
means of such non-Ego, is it intelligence. A finite being is only 
finite as intelligence. These limits, however, we shall break 
through. The practical law which unites the finite Ego with the 
infinite, can depend upon nothing external to ourselves. The 
Ego, according to all its determinations, should be posited abso- 
lutely through itself, and hence should be wholly independent of 
every possible non-Ego. Consequently, the absolute Ego and 
the intelligent Ego, both of which should constitute but one, are 
opposed to each other. This contradiction is obviated, when we 
see that because the absolute Ego is capable of no passiveness, 
but is absolute activity, therefore the Ego determines, through it- 
self, that hitherto unknown non-Ego, to which the hindrance has 
been ascribed. The limits which the Ego, as theoretic, has set 
over against itself in the non-Ego, it must, as practical, seek to 
destroy, and absorb again the non-Ego in itself (or conceive it as 
the self-limitation of the Ego). The Kantian primacy of the 
practical reason is here made a truth. The transition of the 
theoretical part into the practical, the necessity of advancing 
from the one to the other, Fichte represents more closely thus : — 
The theoretical Theory of Science had to do with the mediation 
of the Ego, and the non-Ego. For this end it introduced one 
connecting link after another, without ever attaining its end. 
Then enters the reason with the absolute and decisive word : 
" there ought to be no non-Ego, since the non-Ego can in no way 
be united with the Ego ; " and with this the knot is cut, though 
not untied. Thus it is the incongruity between the absolute 
(practical) Ego, and the finite (intelligent) Ego, which is carried 
over beyond the theoretical province into the practical. True, 
this incongruity does not wholly disappear, even in the practical 
province, where the act is only an infinite striving to surpass the 
limits of the non-Ego. The Ego, so far as it is practical, has, 
indeed, the tendency to pass beyond the actual world, and estab- 
lish an ideal world, as it would be were every reality posited by 



FICHTE. 295 

the absolute Ego ; but this striving is always confined to the 
finite partly through itself, because it goes out towards objects, 
and objects are finite, and partly through the resistance of the 
sensible world. We ought to seek to reach the infinite, but we 
cannot do it ; this striving and inability is the impress of our des- 
tiny for eternity. 

Thus — and in these words Fichte brings together the result of 
the Theory of Science — the whole being of finite rational natures 
is comprehended and exhausted : an original idea of our abso- 
lute being ; an eff'ort to reflect upon ourselves, in order to gain 
this idea ; a limitation, not of this striving, but of our own exist- 
ence, which first becomes actual through this limitation, or 
through an opposite principle, a non-Ego, or our finiteness ; a self- 
consciousness, and especially a consciousness of our practical 
strivings ; a determination accordingly of our representations, 
and through these of our actions ; a constant widening of our 
limits into the infinite. 

2. Fichte's Practical Philosophy. — The principles which 
Fichte had developed in his Theory of Science he applied to 
practical life, especially to the theory of rights of morals. He 
sought to deduce here every thing with methodical rigidness, 
without admitting any thing which could not be proved from 
experience. Thus, in the theory of rights and of morals, he will 
not presuppose a plurality of persons, but first deduces this : even 
that the man has a body is first demonstrated, though, to be sure, 
not stringently. 

The Theory of Rights {the rights of nature) Fichte founds 
upon the conception of the individual. First, he deduces the 
conception of rights, and as follows : — A finite rational being can- 
not posit itself without ascribing to itself a free activity. Through 
this positing of its faculties to a free activity, this rational being 
posits an external world of sense, for it can ascribe to itself no 
activity till it has posited an object towards which this activity 
may be directed. Still farther, this free activity of a rational be- 
ing presupposes other rational beings, for without these it would 
never be conscious that it was free. We have therefore a plu- 



296 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

rality of free individuals, each one of wliom has a sphere of free 
activity. This co-existence of free individuals is not possible 
without a relation of rights. Since no one with freedom passes 
beyond his sphere, and each one therefore limits himself, they recog- 
nize each other as rational and free. This relation of a reciprocal 
acting through intelligence and freedom between rational beings, 
according to which each one has his freedom limited by the con- 
ception of the possibility of the other's freedom, under the con- 
dition also that this other limits his own freedom also through 
that of the first, is called a relation of rights. The supreme 
maxim of a theory of rights is therefore this : limit thy freedom 
through the conception of the freedom of every other person with 
whom thou canst be connected. After Fichte has attempted the 
application of this conception of rights, and ior this end has de- 
duced the corporeity, the anthropological side of man, he passes 
over to a proper theory of rights. The theory of rights may be 
divided into three parts. (1) Rights which belong to the simple 
conception of person are called original rights. The original 
right is the absolute right of the person to be only a cause in the 
sensible world, though he may be absolutely (in other relations 
than to the sense) an effect. In this are contained, (a) the right 
of personal (bodily) freedom, and [h) the right of property. But 
every relation of rights between individual persons is conditioned 
through each one's recognition of the rights of the other. Each 
one must limit the quantum of his free acts for the sake of the 
freedom of the other, and only so far as the other has respect to 
my freedom need I hav^e regard to his. In case, therefore, the 
other does not respect my original rights, some mechanical neces- 
sity must be sought in order to secure the rights of person, and 
this involves (2) the Right of Coercion. The laws of punishment 
have their end in securing that the opposite of that which is in- 
tended shall follow every unrighteous aim, that every vicious pur- 
pose shall be destroyed, and the right in its integrity be estab- 
lished. To establish such a law of coercion, and to secure a uni- 
versal coercive power, the free individuals must enter into cove- 
nant among themselves. Such a covenant is only possible on the 



FICHTE. 29? 

ground of a common nature. Natural right, ^. e. the rightful rela- 
tion between man and man, presupposes thus (3) a civil rights viz., 
(a) a free covenant, a compact of citizens bj which the free individ- 
uals guarantee to each other their reciprocal rights ; (6) positive 
laws, a civil legislation, through which the common will of all be- 
comes law ; (c) an executive force, a civil power which executes 
the commjbi will, and in which, therefore, the private will and the 
common will are synthetically united. The particular view of 
Fichte's theory of rights is this : on the one side there is the state 
as reason demands (philosophical theory of rights), and on the 
other side the state as it actually is (theory of positive rights and 
of the state). But now comes up the problem, to make the actual 
state ever more and more conformable to the state of reason. 
The science which has this approximation for its aim, is polity. 
TTe can demand of no actual state a perfect conformity to the 
idea of a state. Every state constitution is according to right, if 
it only leaves possible an advancement to a better state, and the 
only constitution wholly contrary to right is that whose end is to 
hold every thing just as it is. 

The absolute Ego of the Theory of Science is separated in the 
Theory of Eights into an infinite number of persons with rights : 
to bring it out again in its unity is the problem of Ethics. Eight 
and morals are essentially different. Eight is the external neces- 
sity to omit or to do something in order not to infringe upon the 
freedom of another ; the inner necessity to do or omit some- 
thing wholly independent of external ends, constitutes the moral 
nature of man. And as the theory of rights arose from the conflict 
of the impulse of freedom in one subject with the impulse of free- 
dom in another subject, so does the theory of morals or ethics arise 
from such a conflict, which, in the present case, is not external but 
internal, between two impulses in one and the same person. (1) The 
rational beiag is impelled towards absolute independence, and 
strives after freedom for the sake of freedom. This fundamental 
impulse may be called the pure impulse, and it furnishes the 
formal principle of ethics, the principle of absolute autonomy, of 
absolute indeterminableness through anything external to the Ego. 
13* 



298 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

But (2) as the rational being is actually empirical and finite, as it 
by nature posits over against itself a non-Ego and posits itself as 
corporeal, so there is found beside the pure impulse another, the 
impulse of nature, which makes for its end not freedom but enjoy- • 
ment. This impulse of nature furnishes the material, utilitarian 
(eudoemoniacal) principle of striving after a connected enjoyment. 
Both impulses, which from a transcendental standpfcit are one 
and the same original impulse of the human being, strive after 
unity, and furnish a third impulse which is a mingling of the two. 
The pure impulse gives the form, and the natural impulse the 
content of an action. It is true that sensuous objects will be 
chosen, but by virtue of the pure impulse these are modified so as 
to conform to the absolute Ego. This mingled impulse is now the 
moral impulse. ' It mediates the pure and the natural impulse. 
But since these two lie infinitely apart, the approximation of the 
natural to the pure impulse is an infinite progression. The intent 
in an action is directed towards a complete freeing from nature, 
and it is only the result of our limitation that the act should re- 
main still conformable to the natural impulse. Since the Ego 
can never be independent so long as it is Ego, the final aim of the 
rational being lies in infinity. There must be a course in whose 
progress the Ego can conceive itself as approximating towards ab- 
solute independence. This course is determined in infinity in the 
idea ; there is, therefore, no possible case in which it is not deter- 
mined what the pure impulse should demand. We might name 
this course the moral determination (destiny) of the finite rational 
being. The principle of ethics is, therefore: Ahuays fulfil thy 
destiny ! That which is in every moment conformable to our 
moral destiny, is at the same time demanded by our natural im- 
pulse, though it does not follow that every thing which the latter 
demands agrees therefore with the former. I ought to act only 
when conscious that something is duty, and I ought to discharge 
the duty for its own sake. The blind motives of sympathy, love 
of mankind, &c., have not, as mere impulses of nature, morality. 
The moral impulse has causality as having none, for it demands 
be free ! Through the conception of the absolute ought, is the 



FICHTE. 299 

rational being absolutely independent, and is represented thus 
only when acting from duty. The formal condition of the mo- 
rality of our actions, is : act always according to the best con- 
viction of thy duty ; or, act according to thy conscience. The 
absolute criterion of the correctness of our conviction of duty is 
a feeling of truth and certainty. This immediate feeling never 
deceives, for it only exists with the perfect harmony of our em- 
pirical Ego with that which is pure and original. From this 
point Fichte developes his particular ethics, or theory of duties, 
which, however, we must here pass by. 

Fichte's theory of religion is developed in the above men- 
tioned treatise : " On the ground of our faith in a divine gov- 
ernment of the worlds'''' and in the writings which he subsequently 
put forth in its defence. The moral government of the world, 
says Fichte, we assume to be the divine. This divine government 
becomes living and actual in us through right-doing : it is pre- 
supposed in every one of our actions which are only performed in 
the presupposition that the moral end is attainable in the world 
of sense. The faith in such an order of the world comprises the 
whole of faith, for this living and active moral order is God ; we 
need no other God, and can comprehend no other. There is no 
ground in the reason to go out of this moral order of the world, 
and by concluding from design to a designer, affirm a separate being 
as its cause. Is, then, this order an accidental one ? It is the 
absolute First of all objective knowledge. But now if you should 
be allowed to draw the conclusion that there is a God as a separate 
being, what have you gained by this ? This being should be dis- 
tinct from you and the world, it should work in the latter accord- 
ing to conceptions ; it should, therefore, be capable of conceptions, 
and possess personality and consciousness. But what do you call 
personality and consciousness ? Certainly that which you have 
found in yourself, which you have learned to know in yourself, and 
which you have characterized with such a name. But that you 
cannot conceive of this without limitation and finiteness, you 
might see by the slightest attention to the construction of this 
conception. By attaching, therefore, such a predicate to this be- 



800 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ing, you bring it down to a finite, and make it a being like your- 
self ; you have not conceived God as you intended to do, but have 
only multiplied yourself in thought. The conception of God, as 
a separate substance, is impossible and contradictory. God has 
essential existence only as such a moral order of the world. Every 
belief in a divine being, which contains any thing more than the 
conception of the moral order of the world, is an abomination to 
me, and in the highest degree unworthy of a rational being. — Re- 
ligion and morality are, on this standpoint, as on that of Kant, 
naturally one ; both are an apprehending of the supersensible, the 
former through action and the latter through faith. This " Reli- 
gion of joyous right-doing," Fichte farther carried out in the 
writings which he put forth to rebut the charge of atheism. He 
affirms that nothing but the principles of the new philosophy could 
restore the degenerate religious sense among men, and bring to 
light the inner essence of the Christian doctrine. Especially he 
seeks to show this in his ^^ Appeal " to the public. In this he 
says : to furnish ,an answer to the questions : what is good ? what 
is true ? is the aim of my philosophical system. We must start 
with the affirmation that there is something absolutely true and 
good ; that there is something which can hold and bind the free 
flight of thought. There is a voice in man which cannot be 
silenced, which affirms that there is a duty, and that it must be 
done simply for its own sake. Resting on this basis, there is 
opened to us an entirely new world in our being ; we attain a 
higher existence, which is independent of all nature, and is 
grounded simply in ourselves. I would call this absolute self-sat- 
isfaction of the reason, this perfect freedom from all dependence, 
blessedness. As the single but unerring means of blessedness, my 
conscience points me to the fulfilment of duty. I am, therefore, 
impressed by the unshaken conviction, that there is a rule and 
fixed order, according to which the purely moral disposition neces- 
sarily makes blessed. It is absolutely necessary, and it is the 
essential element in religion, that the man who maintains the dig- 
nity of his reason, will repose on the faith in this order of a moral 
world, will regard each one of his duties as an enactment of this 



FICHTE. 301 

order, and will joyfully submit himself to, and find bliss in, every 
consequence of his duty. Thou shalt know God if I can only 
beget in thee a dutiful character, and though to others of us thou 
mayest seem to be still in the world of sense, yet for thyself art 
thou already a partaker of eternal life. 

II. The latepv. form of Fichte's Philosophy. — Every thing 
of importance which Fichte accomplished as a speculative philoso- 
pher, is contained in the Theory of Science as above considered. 
Subsequently, after his departure from Jena, his system gradually 
became modified, and from different causes. Partly, because it 
was difficult to maintain the rigid idealism cf the Theory of 
Science ; partly, because Schelling's natural philosophy, which 
now appeared, was not without an infiuence upon Fichte's think- 
ing, though the latter denied this and became involved in a bitter 
controversy with Schelling; and, partly, his outward relations, 
which were far from being happy, contributed to modify his view 
of the world. Fichte's writings, in this second period, are for the 
most part popular, and intended for a mixed class of readers- 
They all bear the impress of his acute mind, and of his exalted 
manly character, but lack the originality and the scientific sequence 
of his earlier productions. Those of them which are scientific 
do not satisfy the demands which he himself had previously laid 
down with so much strictness, both for himself and others, in 
respect of genetic construction and philosophical method. His 
doctrine at this time seems rather as a web, of his old subjective 
idealistic conceptions and the newly added objective idealism, so 
loosely connected that Schelling might call it the completest 
syncretism aud eclecticism. His new standpoint is chiefly distin- 
guished from his old by his attempt to merge his subjective ideal- 
ism into an objective pantheism (in accordance with the new 
Platonism), to transmute the Ego of his earlier philosophy into 
the absolute, or the thought of God. God, whose conception he 
had formerly placed only at the end of his system, in the doubt- 
ful form of a moral order of the world, becomes to him now the 
absolute beginning, and single element of his philosophy. This 
gave to his philosophy an entirely new color. The moral severity 



302 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

gives place to a religious mildness ; instead of the Ego and tlie 
Ought, life and love are now the chief features of his philosophy ; 
in place of the exact dialectic of the Theory of Science, he now 
makes choice of mystical and metaphorical modes of expression. 

This second period of Fichte's philosophy is especially charac- 
terized by its inclination to religion and Christianity, as exhibited 
most prominently in the essay ^' Direction to a Blessed Life,'''* 
Fichte here affirms that his new doctrine is exactly that of Chris- 
tianity, and especially of the Gospel according to John. He 
would make this gospel alone the clear foundation of Christian 
truth, since the other apostles remained half Jews after their con- 
version, and adhered to the fundamental error of Judaism, that 
the world had a creation in time. Fichte lays great weight upon 
the first part of John's prologue, where the formation of the world 
out of nothing is confuted, and a true view laid down of a revela- 
tion CO- eternal with Grod, and necessarily given with his being. 
That which this prologue says of the incarnation of the Logos in 
the person of Jesus, has, according to Fichte, only a historic 
validity. The absolute and eternally true standpoint is, that at 
all times, and in every one, without exception, who is vitally sen- 
sible of his union with God, and who actually and in fact yields 
up his whole individual life to the divine life within him, — the 
eternal word becomes flesh in the same way as in Jesus Christ 
and holds a personal, sensible, and human existence. The whole 
communion of believers, the first-born alike with the later born, 
coincides in the Godhead, the common source of life for all. And 
so then, Christianity having gained its end, disappears again in 
the eternal truth, and affirms that every man should come to a 
union with God. So long as man desires to be himself any thing 
whatsoever, God does not come to him, for no man can become 
God. But just so soon as he purely, wholly, and radically gives 
up himself, God alone remains, and is all and in all. The man 
himself can beget no God, but he can give up himself as a proper 
negation, and thus he disappears in God. 

The result of his advanced philosophizing, Fichte has briefly 



HERBART. 303 

and clearly comprelieiided in the following lines, whicli we extract 
from two posthumous sonnets : 

The Eternal One 
Lives in my life and sees in my beholding. 
Nonglit is but God, and God is nought but life. 
Clearly the vail of things rises before thee ; 
It is thyself, what though the mortal die 
And hence there lives but God in thine endeavors , 
If thou wilt look through that which lives beyond this death, 
The vail of things shall seem to thee as vail, 
And unveiled thou shalt look upon the life divine. 



SECTION XLII. 

HERBAKT. 

A peculiar, and in many respects noticeable, carrying out of 
the Kantian philosophy, was attempted by Johann Friedrich 
Herhart^ who was born at Oldenburg in 1776, chosen professor 
of philosophy in Grottingen in 1805 ; made Kant's successor at 
Konigsberg in 1808, and' recalled to Gottingen in 1833, where he 
died in 1841. His philosophy, instead of making, like most other 
systems, for its principle, an idea of the reason, followed the direc- 
tion of Kant, and expended itself mainly in a critical examina- 
tion of the subjective experience. It is essentially a criticism, 
but with results which are peculiar, and which differ wholly from 
those of Kant. Its fundamental position in the history of phi- 
losophy is an isolated one ; instead of regarding antecedent sys- 
tems as elements of a true philosophy, it looks upon almost all of 
them as failures. It is especially hostile to the post-Kantian Ger- 
man philosophy, and most of all to Schelling's philosophy of na- 
ture, in which it could only behold a phantom and a delusion ; 
sooner than come in contact with this, it would join Hegelianism, 
of which it is the opposite pole. We will give a brief exposition 
of its prominent thoughts. 



304 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

1. The Basis and Starting-point of Philosophy is, accord 
ing to Herbart, the common view of things, or a knowledge which 
shall accord with experience. A philosophical system is in reali- 
ty nothing but an attempt by which a thinker strives to solve cer- 
tain questions which present themselves before him. Every ques- 
tion brought up in philosophy should refer itself singly and solely 
to that which is given, and must arise from this source alone, be- 
cause there is no other original field of certainty, for men, than 
experience alone. Every philosophy should begin with it. The 
thinking should yield itself to experience, which should lead it, 
and not be led by it. Experience, therefore, is the only object 
and basis of philosophy ; that which is not given cannot be an ob- 
ject of thought, and it is impossible to establish any knowledge 
which transcends the limits of experience. 

2. The first act of Philosophy. — Though the material fur- 
nished by experience is the basis of philosophy, yet, since it is 
furnished, it stands outside of philosophy. The question arises, 
what is the first act or beginning of philosophy ? The thinking 
should first separate itself from experience, that it may clearly 
see the difficulties of its undertaking. The beginning of jphiloso- 
jpJiy^ where the thinking rises above that which is given, is ac- 
cordingly doubt or scepticism. Scepticism is twofold, a lower 
and a higher. The lower scepticism simply doubts that things 
are so constituted as they appear to us to be ; the higher scepti- 
cism passes beyond the form of the phenomenon, and inquires 
whether in reality any thing there exists. It doubts e, g. the suc- 
cession in time ; it asks in reference to the forms of the objects 
of nature which exhibit design, whether the design is perceived, 
or only attached to them in the thought, &c. Thus the problems 
which form the content of metaphysics, are gradually brought 
out. The result of scepticism is therefore not negative, but posi- 
tive. Doubt is nothing but the thinking upon those conceptions 
of experience which are the material of philosophy. Through this 
reflection, scepticivsm leads us to the knowledge that these con- 
ceptions of experience, though they refer to something given, yet 
contain no conceivable content free from logical incongruities. 



HERBART. 305 

3. Remodelling of the conceptions of experience.— Me- 
taphysics, according to Herbart, is the science of that which is 
conceivable in experience. Our view thus far has been a twofold 
one. On the one side we hold fast to the opinion that 
the single basis of philosophy is experience, and on the other side, 
scepticism has shaken the credibility of experience. The point 
now is to transform this scepticism into a definite knowledge of 
metaphysical problems. Conceptions from experience crowd upon 
us, which cannot be thoughts, i. e, they may indeed be thought by 
the ordinary understanding, but this thinking is obscure and con- 
fused, and does not separate nor compare opposing characteristics. 
But an acute process of thought, a logical analysis, will find in the 
conceptions of experience {e.g. space, time, becoming, motion, &c.) 
contradictions and characteristics, which are totally inconsistent 
with each other. What now is to be done ? "We may not reject 
these conceptions, for they are given, and beyond the given we 
cannot step ; we cannot retain them, for they are inconceivable and 
cannot logically be established. The only way of escape which 
remains to us is to remodel them. To remodel the conceptions of 
experience^ to eliminate their contradictions, is the proper act of 
speculation. Scepticism has brought to light the more definite 
problems which involve a contradiction, and whose solution it 
therefore belongs to metaphysics to attempt ; the most important 
of these are the problems of inherence, change, and the Ego. 

The relation between Herbart and Hegel is very clear at this 
point. Both are agreed respecting the contradictory nature of 
the determinations of thought, and the conceptions of experience. 
But from this point they separate. It is the nature of these con- 
ceptions as of every thing, says Hegel, to be an inner contradic- 
tion ; becoming, for instance, is essentially the unity of being, and 
not being, &c. This is impossible, says Herbart, on the other 
side, so long as the principle of contradiction is valid ; if the con- 
ceptions of experience contain inner contradictions, this is not the 
fault of the objective world, but of the representing subject who 
must rectify his false apprehension by remodelling these concep- 
tions, and eliminating the contradiction. Herbart thus charges the 



306 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

philosopliy of Hegel with empiricism, because it receives from ex- 
perience these contradictory conceptions unchanged, and not only 
regards these as established, but even goes so far as to metamor- ■ 
phose logic on their account, and this simply because they are 
given in experience, though their contradictory nature is clearly 
seen. Hegel and Herbart stand related to each other as Hera- 
clitus and Parmenides {cf, § ^ VI. and VII.) 

4. Herbart's Reals. — From this point Herbart reaches his , 
*^ reals " [Realen) as follows : To discover the contradictions, he 
says, in all our conceptions of experience, might lead us to abso- 
lute scepticism, and to despair of the truth. But here we re- 
member that if the existence of every thing real be denied, then 
the appearance, sensation, representation, and thought itself 
would be destroyed. We perceive, therefore, just as strong an 
indication of being as of appearance. We cannot, indeed, as» 
cribe to the given any true and essential being per se, it is not ■ | 
per se alone, but only on, ^or in, or through something other. 
The truly being is an absolute being, which as such excludes 
every thing relative and dependent ; it is ahsolute position, m j 
which it is not for us first to posit, but only to recognize. In so 
far as this being is attributed to any thing, this latter possesses 
reality. The truly being is, therefore, ever a quale ^ a something 
which is considered as being. In order now that this posited 
may correspond to the conditions which lie in the conception of 
absolute position, the what of the real must be thought (a) as 
absolutely positive or affirmative, i. e, without any negation or 
limitation, which might destroy again the absoluteness ; (6) as ab- 
solutely simple, ^. e, in no way, as a multiplicity or admitting of 
inner antitheses ; {c) as indeterminate by any conceptions of great- 
ness, i. e. not as a quantum which may be divided and extended 
in time and space ; hence, also, not as a constant greatness or con- 
tinuity. But we must never forget that this being or this absolute 
reality is not simply something thought, but is something inde- 
pendent and resting on itself, and hence it is simply to be recog- 
nized by the thinking. The conception of this thinking lies at 
the basis of all Herbart's metaphysics. Take an example of this. 



HERBART. 307 

The first problem to Ibe solved in metaphysics is the problem of 
inherence, or the thing with its characteristics. Every percepti- 
ble thing represents itself to the senses as a complex of several 
characteristics. But all the attributes of a thing which are given 
in perception are relative. We say e. g. that sound is a property 
of a certain body. It sounds — but it cannot do this without air ; 
what now becomes of this property in a space without air ? 
Again, we say that a body is heavy, but it is only so on the 
earth. Or again, that a body is colored, but light is necessary 
for this ; what now becomes of such a property in darkness ? 
Still farther, a multiplicity of properties is incompatible with the 
unity of an object. If you ask what is this thing, you are an- 
swered with the sum of its characteristics ; it is soft, white, full- 
sounding, heavy, — but your question was of one, not of many. 
The answer only affirms what the thing has, not what it is. 
Moreover, the list of characteristics is always incomplete. The 
what of a thing can therefore lie neither in the individual given 
properties, nor in their unity. In determining what a thing is, 
we have only this answer remaining, viz., the thing is that un- 
known, which we must posit before we can posit any thing as ly- 
ing in the given properties ; in a word, it is the substance. For 
if, in order to see what the thing purely and essentially is, we 
take away the characteristics which it may have, we find that 
nothing more remains, and we perceive that what we considered 
as the real thing was only a complex of characteristics, and the 
union of these in one whole. But since every appearance indi- 
cates a definite reality, and thus since there must be as much re- 
ality as there is appearance, we have to consider the reality, 
which lies at the basis of the thing, with its characteristics, as a 
complex of many simple substances or monads, and whose quality 
is different in different instances. When our experience has led 
us to a repeated grouping together of these monads, we call the 
group a thing. Let us now briefly look at the formation of those 
fundamental conceptions of metaphysics, which involve the same 
thoughts through the fundamental conception of being. First, 
there is the conception of causality, which cannot be maintained 



308 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



1 



in its ordinary form. All that we can perceive in the act is suc- 
cession in time, and not the necessary connection of cause with 
effect. The cause in itself can be neither transcendent nor im- 
manent ; it cannot be transcendent, because a real influence of 
one real thing upon another, contradicts the conception of the 
absolute reality ; nor immanent, for then the substance must be 
thought as one with its characteristics, which contradicts the in- 
vestigations concerning a thing with its characteristics. We can 
just as little find in the conception of the real an answer to the 
question, how one determinate being can be brought into contact 
with another, for the real is the absolute unchangeable. We can 
therefore only explain the conception of causality on the ground 
that the different reals which lie at the basis of the characteris- 
tics are conceived, each one for itself, as cause of the phenome- 
non, there being just as many causes as there are phenomena. 
The problem of change, is intimately connected with the concep- 
tion of cause. Since, however, according to Herbart, there is no 
inner change, no self-determination, no becoming and no life ; since 
the monads are, and remain in themselves unchangeable, they do 
not therefore hecome different in respect of quality, but they are 
originally different one from another, and each one exhibits its 
equality without ever any change. The problem of change can 
thus only be solved through the theory of the disturbance and 
self-preservation of these essences. But if that which we call 
not simply an apparent but an actual event, in the essence of the 
monads, may be reduced to a '^ self-preservation," as the last 
gleam of an activity and life, still we have the question ever re- 
maining, how to explain the appearance of change. For this it 
is necessary to bring in two auxiliary conceptions ; first, that of 
accidental views, and second, that of intellectual spaces. The 
accidental views, an expression taken from mathematics, signify, 
in reference to the problem before us this much, viz., one and the 
same conception may often be considered in very different rela- 
tions to some other essence, without the slightest change in its 
own essence, e. g, a straight line may be considered as radius or 
as tangent, and a tone as harmonious or discordant. By help of 



HERBART. 309 

these accidental views, we may now regard that which actually 
results in the monad, when other monads, opposite in quality, 
come in contact with it, as on the one side an actual occurrence, 
though on the other side, no actual change can be imputed to the 
original condition of the monads (a gray color, e. g, seems com- 
paratively white by the side .of black, and comparatively black 
by the side of white, without changing at all its quality). A 
further auxiliary conception is that of intellectual space, which 
arises when we must consider these essences as at the same time 
together and not together. By means of this conception we can 
eliminate the contradictions from the conception of movement. 
Lastly, it can be seen that the conception of matter and that of 
the Ego (in psychologically explaining which, the rest of the 
metaphysics is occupied) are, like the preceding ones, no less con- 
tradictory in themselves than they are irreconcilable with the 
fundamental conception of the real ; for neither can an extended 
being, like matter, be formed out of spaceless monads — and with 
matter, therefore, fall also the ordinary conceptions of space and 
time — ^nor can we admit, without transformation, the conception 
of the BgOy since it exhibits the contradictory conception of a 
thing with many and changing characteristics (conditions, pow- 
ers, faculties, &c.) 

We are reminded by Herbart's " reals " of the atomic theory 
of the atomists [cf. § IX. 2), of the Eleatic theory of the one be- 
ing (c/e ^ VI.), and of Leibnitz's monadology. His reals however 
are distinguished from the atoms by not possessing impenetrability. 
The monads of Herbart may be just as well represented in the 
same space as a mathematical point may be conceived as accurate- 
ly coexisting with another in the same place. In this respect the 
" real " of Herbart has a far greater similarity to the " one " of the 
Eleatics. Both are simple, and to be conceived in intellectual 
spaces, but the essential difference is, that Herbart's substances ex- 
ist in numbers distinct from one another, and even from opposites 
among themselves. Herbart's simple quantities have already been 
compared to the monads of Leibnitz, but these latter have essen- 
tially a power of representation ; they are essences with inner cir- 



810 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cumstances, while, according to Herbart, representation, just as lit- 
tle as every other circumstance, belongs to the essence itself. 

5. Psychology is connected with metaphysics. The Ego is 
primarily a metaphysical problem, and comes in this respect under 
the category of the thing with its characteristics. It is a real with Mi 
many properties changing circumstances, powers, faculties, activi- ■ ' 
ties, &c., and thus is not without contradictions. But then the Ego 
is a psychological principle, and here those contradictions may be 
considered which lie in the ideality of subject and object. The 
subject posits itself and is therefore itself object. But this posited 
object is nothing other than the positing subject. Thus the 
Ego is, as Fichte says, subject-object, and, as such, full of the 
hardest contradictions, for subject and object will never be affirmed 
as one and the same without contradiction. But now if the Ego 
is given it cannot be thrown away, but must be purified from its 
contradictions. This occurs whenever the Ego is conceived as 
that which represents, and the difierent sensations, thoughts, &c. 
are embraced under the common conception of changing appear- 
ance. The solution of this problem is similar to that of inher- 
ence. As in the latter problem the thing was apprehended as a 
complex of as many reals as it has characteristics, just so here the 
Ego ; but with the Ego inner circumstances and representations 
correspond to the characteristics. Thus that which we are accus- 
tomed to name Ego is nothing other than the soul. The soul as 
a monad, as absolutely being, is therefore simple, eternal, indis- 
soluble, from which we may conclude its eternal existence. From 
this standpoint Herbart combats the ordinary course of psychology 
which ascribes certain powers and faculties to the soul. That 
which stands out in the soul is nothing other than self-preserva- 
tion, which can only be manifold and changing in opposition to 
other reals. The causes of changing circumstances are therefore 
these other reals, which come variously in conflict with the soul- 
monad, and thus produce that apparently infinite manifoldness of 
sensations, representations, and afiections. This theory of self, 
preservation lies at the basis of all Herbart's psychology. That 
which psychology ordinarily calls feeling, thinking, representing, 



HERBART. 311 

&c., are only specific differences in the self-preservation of the 
soul; they indicate no proper condition of the inner real essence 
itself, but only relations between the reals, relations, which, coming 
up together at the same time from different sides, are partly sup- 
pressed, partly forwarded, and partly modified Consciousness is 
the sum of those relations in which the soul stands to other essences. 
But the relations to the objects, and hence to the represen- 
tations corresponding to these, are not all equally strong; one 
presses, restricts, and obscures another, a relation of equilibrium 
which can be calculated according to the doctrine of statics. But 
the suppressed representations do not wholly disappear, but wait- 
ing on the threshold of consciousness for the favorable moment 
when they shall be permitted again to arise, they join themselves 
with kindred representations, and press forward with united ener- 
gies. This movement of the representations (sketched in a master- 
ly manner by Herbart) may be calculated according to the rules 
of mathematics, and this is Herbart's well known application of 
mathematics to the empirical theory of the soul. The represen- 
tations which were pressed back, which wait on the threshold of con- 
sciousness and only work in the darkness, and of which we are on- 
ly half conscious, are feelings. They express themselves as desires, 
according as their struggle forward is more or less successful. 
Desire becomes will when united with the hope of success. The 
will is no separate faculty of the mind, but consists only in the 
relation of the dominant representations to the others. The 
power of deciding and the character of a man, prominently depend 
upon the constant presence in the consciousness of a certain num- 
ber of representations, while other representations are weakened, 
or denied an entrance over the threshold of consciousness. 

6. The Importance of Herbart's Philosophy. — Herbart's 
philosophy is important mainly for its metaphysics and psychology. 
In the other spheres and activities of the human mind, e, g. rights, 
morality, the state, art, religion, his philosophy is mostly barren of 
results, and though there are not wanting here striking observa- 
tions, yet these have no connection with the speculative principles 
of the system. Herbart fundamentally isolates the different phil- 



i 



812 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

osopliical sciences, distinguisliing especially and in tlie strictest 
manner between theoretical and practical philosopliy. He charges 
the effort after unity in philosophy, with occasioning the greatest 
errors ; for logical, metaphysical, and aesthetic forms are entirely 
diverse. Ethics and assthetics have to do with objects in which an 
immediate evidence appears, but this is foreign to the whole nature 
of metaphysics, which can only gain its knowledge as errors have I 
been removed. Esthetic judgments on which practical philoso- 
phy rests, are independent of the reality of any object, and appear 
with immediate certainty in the midst of the strongest metaphysi- 
cal doubts. Moral elements, says Herbart, are pleasing and dis- 
pleasing relations of the will. He thus grounds the whole 
practical philosophy upon aesthetic judgments. The aesthetic 
judgment is an involuntary and immediate judgment, which 
attaches to certain objects, without proof, the predicates of goodness 
and badness. — Here is seen the greatest difference between Her- 
bart and Kant. 

"We may characterize, on the whole, the philosophy of Her- 
bart as a carrying out of the monadology of Leibnitz, full of en- 
during acuteness, but without any inner fruitfulness or capacity 
of development. 



SECTION XLIII. 

SCHELLING. 

SchelUng sprang from Fichte, We may pass on to an expo- 
sition of his philosophy without any farther introduction, since 
that which it contains from Fichte forms a part of its historical 
development, and will therefore be treated of as this is un- 
folded. 

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph SchelUng was born at Leonberg, 
in W rtemberg, January 27th, 1775. With a very precocious 
development, he entered the theological seminary at Tubingen in 






SCHELLING. 313 

his fifteenth year, and devoted himself partly to philology and 
mythology, but especially to Kant's philosophy. During his 
course as a student, he was in personal connection with Holder- 
lin and Hegel. Schelling came before the world as an author 
very early. In 1792 appeared his graduating treatise on the 
third chapter of Genesis, in which he gave an interesting philoso- 
phical signification to the Mosaic account of the fall. In the fol- 
lowing year, 1793, he published in Paulus^ Memorabilia an essay 
of a kindred nature '^ On the Myths and Philosophemes of the 
Ancient Worlds To the last year of his abode at Tiibingen 
belong the two philosophical writings : " On the Possibility of a 
Form for Philosophy ^^'^ and " On the Ego as a Principle of 
Philosophy^ or on the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge.'''^ 
After completing his university studies, Schelling went to Leipsic 
as tutor to the Baron von Riedesel, but soon afterwards repaired 
to Jena, where he became the pupil and co-laborer of Fichte. 
After Fichte's departure from Jena, he became himself, 1798, 
teacher of philosophy there, and now began, removing himself 
from Fichte's standpoint, to develope more and more his own pe- 
culiar views. He published in Jena the Journal of Specidative 
Physics^ and also in company with Hegel, the Critical Journal. 
In the year 1803 he went to Wiirzburg as professor ordinarius 
of philosophy. In 1807 he repaired to Munich as member ordi- 
narius of the newly established academy of sciences there. The 
year after he became general secretary of the Academy of the 
plastic arts, and subsequently, when the university professorship 
was established at Munich, he became its incumbent. After the 
death of Jacobi, he was chosen president of the Munich Academy. 
In 1841 he removed to Berlin, where he has sometimes held lec- 
tures. For the last ten years Schelling has written nothing of 
importance, although he has repeatedly promised an exposition of 
his present system. By far the greater portion of his writings 
belongs to his early life. Schelling's philosophy is no completed 
system of which his separate works are the constituent elements ; 
but, like Plato's, it has a historical development, a course of 
formative steps which the philosopher has passed through in his 
14 



314 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

own life. Instead of systematically elaborating the separate 
sciences from the standpoint of his principle, Schelling has gone 
back repeatedly to the beginning again, seeking ever for new 
foundations and new standpoints, connecting these for the most part 
(like Plato) with some antecedent philosophemes, (Fichte, Spi- 
noza, New Platonism, Leibnitz, Jacob Boehme, Gnosticism,) which 
in their order he attempted to interweave with his system. We 
must modify accordingly our exposition of Schelling's Philosophy, 
and take up its different periods, separated according to the dif- 
ferent groups of his writings.* 

I. First Period. Schelling's Procession from Fichte. 

Schelling's starting point was Fichte, whom he decidedly fol- 
lowed in his earliest writings. In his essay, " On the PossihilUy 
of a Form of Fhiloso'phy ^'^ he shows the necessity of that supreme 
principle which Fichte had first propounded. In his essay, " On 
the Ego^'' Schelling shows that the ultimate ground of our knowl- 
edge can only lie in the Ego, and hence that every true philosophy 
must be idealism. If our knowledge shall possess reality, there 
must be one point in which ideality and reality, thought and be- 
ing, can identically coincide ; and if outside of our knowledge, I 
there were something higher which conditioned it, if itself were 
not the highest, then it could not be absolute. Fichte regarded 
this essay as a commentary on his Theory of Science ; yet it con- 
tains already indications of Schelling's subsequent standpoint, in 
its expressly affirming the unity of all knowledge, the necessity 
that in the end all the different sciences shall become merged into 
one. In the ^''Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism^'' 1795, 
Schelling combatted the notions of those Kantians who had left 
the critical and idealistic standpoint of their master, and fallen 
back again into the old dogmatism. It was also on the stand- 
point of Fichte that Schelling published in Niethammer's and 
Fichte's Journal, 1797-98, a series of articles, in which he gave 
a survey of the recent philosophical literature. Here he begins 

* Schelling died August 20th, 1854, at Ragaz, Switzerland, whither ho 
had gone for the benefit of his health, which had long been declining. — 
Translator. 



SCHELLING. 315 

to turn his attention towards a philosophical deduction of nature, 
though he still remains on the standpoint of Fichte when he de- 
duces nature wholly from the essence of the Ego. In the essay 
which was composed soon after, and entitled " Ideas for a philos- 
ophy of Nature,'' 1797, and the one " On the World-soul,'" 1798, 
he gradually unfolded more clearly his views. The chief points 
which are brought out in the two last named essays are the fol- 
lowing : The first origin of the conception of matter springs 
from nature and the intuition of the human mind. The mind is 
the union of an unlimited and a limiting energy. If there were 
no limit to the mind, consciousness would be just as impossible as 
if the mind were totally and absolutely limited. Feeling, percep- 
tion and knowledge are only conceivable, as the energy which 
strives for the unlimited becomes limited through its opposite, and 
as this latter becomes itself freed from its limitations. The ac- 
tual mind or heart consists only in the antagonism of these two 
energies, and hence only in their ever approximate or relative 
unity. Just so is it in nature. Matter as such is not the first, 
for the forces of which it is the unity are before it. Matter is 
only to be apprehended as the ever becoming product of attrac- 
tion and repulsion ; it is not, therefore, a mere inert grossness, as 
we are apt to represent it, but these forces are its original. But 
force in the material is like something immaterial. Force in nature 
is that which we may compare to mind. Since now the mind or 
heart exhibits precisely the same conflict, as matter, of opposite 
forces, we must unite the two in a higher identity. But the organ 
of the mind for apprehending nature is the intuition which takes, 
as object of the external sense, the space which has been filled and 
limited by the attracting and repelling forces. Thus Schelling 
was led to the conclusion that the same absolute appears in nature 
as in mind, and that the harmony of these is something more than 
a thought in reference to them. ^' Or if you affirm that we only 
carry over such an idea to nature, then have you utterly failed to 
apprehend the only nature which there can be to us. For onr 
view of nature is not that it accidentally meets the laws of our 
mind — (perhaps through the mediation of a third) — but that it 



316 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

necessarily and originally not only expresses, but itself realizes, 
the laws of our mind, and that it is nature, and is called such 
only in so far as it does this." " Nature should be the visible 
mind, and mind invisible nature. Here, therefore, in the absolute 
ideality of the mind within us, and nature without us, must we 
solve the problem how it is possible for a nature outside of us to 
be." This thought, that nature or matter is just as much the ac- 
tual unity of an attracting and a repelling force, as the mind or 
heart is the unity of an unlimited and a limiting tendency, and 
that the repelling force in matter corresponds to the positive or 
unlimited activity of the mind, while the attracting force corres- 
ponds to the mind's negative or limiting activity — this identical 
deduction of matter from the essence of the Ego, is very promi- 
nent in all that Schelling wrote upon natural philosophy during 
this period. Nature thus appears as a copy [Dojppelhild) of the 
mind, which the mind itself produces, in order to return, by its 
means, to pure self-intuition, to self- consciousness. Hence we 
have the successive stages of nature, in which all the stations of 
the mind in its way to self-consciousness are externally established. 
It is especially in the organic world that the mind can behold its 
own self-production. Hence, in every thing organic, there is 
something symbolical, every plant bears some feature of the soul. 
The chief characteristics of an organic formation, — the self-form- 
ing process from within outwards, the conformity to some end, the 
change of interpenetration of form and matter — are equally chief 
features of the mind. Since now there exists in our mind an end- 
less striving to organize itself, so there must also be manifested in 
the external world a universal tendency to organization. The 
whole universe may thus be called a kind of organization which 
has formed itself from a centre, rising ever from a lower to a 
higher stage. From such a point of view, the natural philosopher 
will make it his chief effort to bring to a unity in his contempla- 
tions that life of nature, which by many researches into physical 
science had been separated into numberless different powers. ''It 
Is a needless trouble which many have given themselves, to show 
how very different is the working of fire and electricity, for every 



SCHELLING. 317 

one tnows this who has ever seen or heard of the two. But our 
mind strives after unity in the system of its knowledge ; it will 
not endure that there should be pressed upon it a separate princi- 
ple for every single phenomenon, and it will only believe that it 
sees nature where it can discover the greatest simplicity of laws 
in the gi-eatest multiplicity of phenomena, and the highest frugality 
of means in the highest prodigality of effects. Therefore, every 
thought, even that which is now rough and crude, merits attention 
so soon as it tends towards the simplifying of principles, and if it 
serves no other end, it at least strengthens the impulse to inves- 
tigate and trace out the hidden process of nature." The special 
tendency of the scientific investigation of nature which prevailed 
at that time, was to make a duality of forces the predominant ele- 
ment in the life of nature. In mechanics, the Kantian theory of 
the opposition of attraction and repulsion was adopted ; in chem- 
istry, by apprehending electricity as positive and negative, its 
phenomenon was brought near that of magnetism ; in physiology 
there was the opposition of irritability and sensibility, &c. In 
opposition to these dualities, Schelling now insisted upon the unity 
of every thing opposite^ the unity of all dualities, and this not 
simply as an abstract unity, but as a concrete identity, as the har- 
monious coworking of the heterogeneous. The world is the actual 
unity of a positive and a negative principle, " and these two con- 
flicting forces taken together, or represented in their conflict, lead 
to the idea of an organizing principle which makes of the world 
a system, in other words, to the idea of a world-soul." 

In his above-cited essay on ^' ihe world-soul ^'^ Schelling took 
the great step forward of apprehending nature as entirely auto- 
nomic. In the world-soul nature has a peculiar principle which 
dwells within it, and works according to conception. In this way 
the objective world was recognized as the independent life of na- 
ture in a manner which the logical idealism of Fichte would not 
permit. Schelling proceeeded still farther in this direction, and 
distinguished definitely, as the two sides of philosophy, the philos- 
ophy of nature and a transcendental philosophy. By placing a 
philosophy of nature by the side of idealism, Schelling passed de- 



318 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cidedly beyond the standpoint of science, and we thus enter a 
second stadium of his philosophizing, though his method still re- 
mained that of FichtCj and he continued to believe that he was 
speculating in the spirit of the Theory of Science, 

II. Second Period. Standpoint of the distinguishing be- 
tween THE Philosophy of Nature and of Mind. 

This standpoint of Schelling is chiefly carried out in the fol- 
lowing works : — " First Draft of a System of Natural Philoso- 
jpJiy^''^ 1799; an introduction to this, 1799; articles in the 
^^ Journal of Speculative Physics^'''' 1800, 1801; System of 
Transcendental Idealism-^'''' 1800. Schelling thus distinguishes 
the two sides of philosophy. All knowledge rests upon the har^ 
mony of a subject with an object. That which is simply objective 
is natural, and that which is simply subjective is the Ego or intel- 
ligence. There are two possible ways of uniting these two sides : 
we may either make nature first, and inquire how it is that intel- 
ligence is associated with it (natural philosophy); or we may 
make the subject first, and inquire how do objects proceed from the 
subject (transcendental philosophy). The end of all philosophy 
must be to make either an intelligence out of nature, or a nature 
out of intelligence. As the transcendental philosophy has to sub- 
ject the real to the ideal, so must natural philosophy attempt to 
explain the ideal from the real. Both, however, are only the two 
poles of one and the same knowledge which reciprocally attract 
each other ; hence, if we start from either pole, we are necessa- 
rily drawn towards the other. 

1. Natural Philosophy. — To philosophize concerning nature 
is, in a certain sense, to create nature — to raise it from the dead 
mechanism in which it had seemed confined, to inspire it with free- 
dom, and transpose it into a properly free development. And what, 
then, is matter, other than mind which has become extinct? Ac- 
cording to this view, since nature is only the visible organism of 
our understanding, it can produce nothing but what is conforma- 
ble to a rule and an end. But you radically destroy every idea of 
nature just so soon as you allow its design to have come to it 
from without, by passing over from the understanding of any 



SCHELLING. 319 

being. The complete exhibition of the intellectual world in the 
laws and forms of the phenomenal world, and, on the other hand, 
the complete conception of these laws and forms from the intel- 
lectual world, and therefore the exhibition of the ideality of na- 
ture with the ideal world, is the work of natural philosophy. 
Immediate experience is indeed its starting point ; we know 
originally nothing except through experience ; but just as soon 
as I gain an insight into the inner necessity of a principle of ex- 
perience, it becomes a principle apriori. Natural philosophy is 
empiricism extended until it becomes absolute. 

Schelling expresses himself as follows, concerning the chief 
principles of a philosophy of nature. Nature is a suspension 
{Schweben) between productivity and product, which 'b always 
passing over into definite forms and products, just as it is always 
productively passing beyond these. This suspension indicates a 
duality of principles, through which nature is held in a constant 
activity, and hindered from exhausting itself in its products. A 
universal duality is thus the principle of every explanation of 
nature ; it is the first principle of a philosophic theory of nature, 
to end in all nature with polarity and dualism. On the other 
hand, the final cause of all our contemplation of nature is to know 
that absolute unity which comprehends the whole, and which suf- 
fers only one side of itself to be known in nature. Nature is, as 
it were, the instrument of this absolute unity, through which it 
eternally executes and actualizes that which is prefigured in the 
absolute understanding. The whole absolute is therefore cogni- 
zable in nature, though phenomenal nature only exhibits in a suc- 
cession, and produces in an endless development, that which the 
true or real nature eternally possesses. Schelling treats of natu- 
ral philosophy in three sections : (1) the proof that nature, in its 
original products, is organic ; (2) the conditions of an inorganic 
nature ; (3) the reciprocal determination of organic and inorganic 
nature. 

(1.) Organic nature Schelling thus deduces: Nature abso- 
lutely apprehended is nothing other than infinite activity, infinite 
productivity. If this were unhindered in expressing itself, it 



320 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

would at once, with infinite celerity, produce an absolute product, 
which would allow no explanation for empirical nature. If this 
latter may be explained — if there may be finite products, we must 
consider the productive activity of nature as restrained by an 
opposite, a retarding activity, which lies in nature itself. Thus 
arises a series of finite products. But since the absolute produc- 
tivity of nature tends towards an absolute product, these indi- 
vidual products are only apparent ones, beyond each one of which 
nature herself advances, in order to satisfy the absoluteness of 
her inner productivity through an infinite series of individual 
products. In this eternal producing of finite products, nature 
shows itself as a living antagonism of two opposite forces, a pro- 
ductive and a retarding tendency. And, indeed, the working of 
this latter is infinitely manifold ; the original productive impulse 
of nature has not only to combat a simple restraint, but it must 
struggle with an infinity of reactions, which may be called original 
qualities. Hence every organic being is the permanent expression 
for a conflict of reciprocally destroying and limiting actions of 
nature. And from this, viz., from the original limitation and in- 
finite restraint of the formative impulse of nature, we see the 
reason why every organization, instead of attaining to an absolute 
product, only reproduces itself ad infinitum. Upon this rests 
the special significance for the organic world, of the distinction of 
sex. The distinction of sex fixes the organic products of nature, 
it restrains them within their own processes of development, and 
suff'ers them only to produce the same again. But in this produc- 
tion nature has no regard for the individual, but only for the 
species. The individual is contrary to nature; nature desires 
the absolute, and its constant efi'ort is to represent this. Indi- 
vidual products, therefore, in which the activity of nature is 
brought to a stand, can only be regarded as abortive attempts to 
represent the absolute. Hence the individual must be the means, 
and the species the end of nature. Just so soon as the species is 
secured, nature abandons the individuals and labors for their de- 
struction. Schelling divides the dynamic scale of organic nature 
according to the three grand functions of the organic world: 



SCHELLING. 321 

(a) Formative impulse (reproductive energy) ; (6) Irritability ; 
(c) Sensibility. Highest in rank are those organisms in which 
sensibility has the preponderance over irritability ; a lower rank 
is held by those where irritability preponderates, and lower still 
are those where reproduction first comes out in its entire perfec- 
tion, while sensibility and irritability are almost extinct. Yet 
these three powers are interwoven together in all nature, and 
hence there is but one organization, descending through all nature 
from man to the plant. 

(2.) Inorganic nature offers the antithesis to organic. The 
existence and essence of inorganic nature are conditioned through 
the existence and essence of organic nature. While the powers 
of organic nature are productive, those of inorganic nature are not 
productive. While organic nature aims only to establish the 
species, inorganic nature regards only the individual, and offers 
no reproduction of the species through the individual. It pos- 
sesses a great multitude of materials, but can only use these ma- 
terials in the way of conjoining or separating. In a word, inor- 
ganic nature is simply a mass held together by some external 
cause as gravity. Yet it, like organic nature, has its gradations. 
The power of reproduction in the latter has its counterpart in the 
chemical process in the former ; that which in the one case is 
irritability, in the other is electricity ; and sensibility, which is 
the highest stage of organic life, corresponds to the universal 
magnetism, the highest stage of the inorganic. 

(3.) The reciprocal determination of the organic and inor- 
ganic world, is made clear by what has already been said. The 
result to which every genuine philosophy of nature must come, is 
that the distinction between organic and inorganic nature is only 
in nature as object, and that nature, as originally productive, 
waves over both. If the functions of an organism are only pos- 
sible on the condition that there is a definite external world, and 
an organic world, then must the external world and the organic 
world have a common origin. This can only be explained on the 
ground that inorganic nature presupposes in order to its existence 
a higher dynamical order of things, to which it is subject. There 



322 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

must be a third, which can unite again organic and inorganic 
nature ; which can be a medium, holding the continuity between 
the two. Both must be identified in some ultimate cause, through 
which, as through one common soul of nature (world-soul), both the 
organic and inorganic, i. e, universal nature, is inspired ; in some 
common principle, which, fluctuating between inorganic and or- 
ganic nature, and maintaining the continuity of the two, contains 
the first cause of all changes in the one, and the ultimate ground 
of all activity in the other. We have here the idea of a univer- 
sal organism. That it is one and the same organization which 
unites in one the organic and inorganic world, would appear from 
what has already been said of the parallel gradations of the two 
worlds. That which in universal nature is the cause of magnet- 
ism, is in organic nature the cause of sensibility, and the latter is 
only a higher potency of the former. Just as in the organic 
world through sensibility, so in universal nature through magnet- 
ism, there arises a duality from the ideality. In this way or- 
ganic nature appears only as a higher stage of the inorganic ; the 
very same dualism which is seen in magnetic polarity, electrical 
phenomena, and chemical difi'erences, displays itself also in the 
organic world. 

2. Transcendental PmLosoPHY. — Transcendental philoso- 
phy is the philosophy of nature become subjective. The whole 
succession of objects thus far described, becomes now repeated as 
a successive development of the beholding subject. It is the pe- 
culiarity of transcendental idealism, that so soon as it is once ad- 
mitted, it requires that the origin of all knowledge shall be sought 
for anew ; that the truth which has long been considered as estab- 
lished, should be subjected to a new examination, and that this 
examination shouW proceed under at least an entirely new form. 
All parts of philosophy must be exhibited in one continuity, and 
the whole of philosophy must be regarded as that which it is, viz., 
the advancing history of consciousness, which can use only as 
monuments or documents that which is laid down in experience. 
(Schelling's transcendental idealism is, in this respect, the fore- 
runner to Hegel's PTicenomenology ^ which pursues a similar 



SCHELLING. 328 

course). The exhibition of this connection is properly a succes- 
sion of intuitions through which the Ego raises itself to conscious- 
ness in the highest potency. Neither transcendental philosophy 
nor the philosophy of nature, can alone represent the parallelism 
between nature and intelligence ; but, in order to this, both 
sciences must be united, the former being considered as a neces- 
sary counterpart to the other. The division of transcendental 
philosophy follows from its problem, to seek anew the origin of 
all knowledge, and to subject to a new examination every pre- 
vious judgment which had been held to be established truth. The 
pre-judgments of the common understanding are principally two : 
(1) That a world of objects exist independent of, and outside of, 
ourselves, and are represented to us just as they are. To explain 
this pre-judgment, is the problem of the first part of the transcen- 
dental philosophy {theoretical philosophy). (2) That we can 
produce an effect upon the objective world according to represen- 
tations which arise freely within us. The solution of this prob- 
lem is practical philosophy. But, with these two problems we 
find ourselves entangled, (3) in a contradiction. How is it possi- 
ble that our thought should ever rule over the world of sense, if 
the representation is conditional in its origin by the objective ? 
The solution of this problem, which is the highest of transcenden- 
tal philosophy, is the answer to the question : how can the repre- 
sentations be conceived as directing themselves according to the 
objects, and at the same time the objects be conceived as direct- 
ing themselves according to the representations ? This is only 
conceivable on the ground that the activity through which the 
objective world is produced, is originally identical with that 
which utters itself in the will. To show this identity of conscious 
and unconscious activity, is the problem of the third part of 
transcendental philosophy, or the science of ends in nature and 
of art. The three garts of the transcendental philosophy corre- 
spond thus entirely to the three criticks of Kant. 

(1.) The theoretical philosophy starts from the highest prin- 
ciple of knowledge, the self-consciousness, and from this point 
developes the history of self- consciousness, according to its most 



324 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

prominent epochs and stations, viz., sensation, intuition, produc- 
tive intuition (wMch produces matter) — outer and inner intuition 
(from wliicli space and time, and all Kant's categories may be 
derived), abstraction (by wliicli the intelligence distinguishes 
itself from its products) — absolute abstraction, or absolute act 
of will. With the act of the will there is spread before us, 

(2). The Field of Practical Philosophy, — In practical philos- 
ophy the Ego is no longer beholding, i, e. consciousless, but 
is consciously producing, i, e, realizing. As a whole, nature de- 
velopes itself from the original act of self-consciousness, so from 
the second act, or the act of free self-determination, there is pro- 
duced a second nature, to find the origin for which is the object 
of practical philosophy. In his exposition of the practical phi- 
losophy, Schelling follows almost wholly the theory of Fichte, 
but closes this section with some remarkable expressions respect- 
ing the philosophy of history. History, as a whole, is, according 
to him, a gradual and self-disclosing revelation of the absolute, a 
progressing demonstration of the existence of a God. The his- 
tory of this revelation may be divided into three periods. The 
first is that in which the overruling power was apprehended only 
as destiny, i. e. as a blind power, cold and consciousless, which 
brings the greatest and most glorious things of earth to ruin ; it 
is marked by the decay of the magnificence and wonders of the 
ancient world, and the fall of the noblest manhood that has ever 
bloomed. The second period of history is that in which this des- 
tiny manifests itself as nature, and the hidden law seems changed 
into a manifest law of nature, which compels freedom and every 
choice to submit to and serve a plan of nature. This period 
seems to begin with the spread of the great Roman republic. 
The third period will be that where what has previously been re- 
garded as destiny and nature, will develope itself as Providence. 
When this period shall begin, we cannot say ; we can only affirm 
that if it be, then God will be seen also to be. 

(3.) Philosophy of Art. — The problem of transcendental 
philosophy is to harmonize the subjective and the objective. In 
history, with which practical philosophy closes, the identity of 



SCHELLING. 325 

the two is not exhibited, but only approximated in an infinite 
progress. But now the Ego must attain a position where it can 
actually look upon this identity, which constitutes its inner es- 
sence. If now all conscious activity exhibits design, then a con- 
scious and consciousless activity can only coincide in a product, 
which, though it exhibits design, was yet produced without de- 
sign. Such a product is nature ; we have here the principle of 
all teleology^ in which alone the solution of the given problem 
can be sought. The peculiarity of nature is this, viz., that 
though it exhibits itself as nothing but a blind mocjianism, it yet 
displays design, and represents an identity of the conscious sub- 
jective, and the consciousless objective activity ; in it the Ego 
beholds its own most peculiar essence, which consists alone in this 
identity. But in nature the Ego beholds this identity, not as 
something objective, which has a being only outside of it, but 
also as that whose principle lies within the Ego itself. This be- 
holding is the art-intuition. As the production of nature is con- 
sciousless, though similar to that which is conscious, so the aes- 
thetic production of the artist is a conscious production, similar 
to that which is consciousless. Esthetics must therefore be 
joined to teleology. That contradiction between the conscious 
and the consciousless, which moves forward untiringly in history, 
and which is unconsciously reconciled in nature, finds its con- 
scious reconciliation in a work of art. In a work of art, the in- 
telligence attains a perfect intuition of itself. The feeling which 
accompanies this intuition, is the feeling of an endless satisfac- 
tion ; all contradictions being resolved, and every riddle ex- 
plained. The unknown, which unexpectedly harmonizes the ob- 
jective and the conscious activity, is nothing other than that ab- 
solute and unchangeable identity, to which every existence must 
be referred. In the artist it lays aside the veil, which elsewhere 
surrounds it, and irresistibly impels him to complete his work. 
Thus there is no other eternal revelation but art, and this is also 
the miracle which should convince us of the reality of that su- 
preme, which is never itself objective, but is the cause of all ob- 
jective. Hence art holds a higher rank than philosophy, for only 



326 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in art has the intellectual intuition objectivity. There is noth- 
ing, therefore, higher to the philosopher than art, because this 
opens before him, as it were, the holy of holies, where that which 
is separate in nature and history, and which in Jife and action, as 
in thought, must ever diverge, burns, as it were, in one flame, in 
an eternal and original union. From this we see also both the 
fact and the reason for it, that philosophy, as philosophy, can 
never be universally valid. Art is that alone to which is given 
an absolute objectivity, and it is through this alone that nature, 
consciously productive, concludes and completes itself within itself. 

The ^' Transcendental Idealism " is the last work which 
Schelling wrote after the method of Fichte. In its principle he 
goes decidedly beyond the standpoint of Fichte. That which 
was with Fichte the inconceivable limit of the Ego, Schelling 
derives as a necessary duality, from the simple essence of the 
Ego. While Fichte had regarded the union of subject and ob- 
ject, only as an infinite progression towards that which ought to 
be, Schelling looked upon it as actually accomplished in a work 
of art. With Fichte God was apprehended only as the object of 
a moral faith, but with Schelling he was looked upon as the im- 
mediate object of the aesthetic intuition. This difi'erence between 
the two could not long be concealed from Schelling. He was 
obliged to see that he no longer stood upon the basis of subjec- 
tive idealism, but that his real position was that of objective ideal- 
ism. If he had already gone beyond Fichte in setting the phi- 
losophy of nature and transcendental philosophy opposite to each 
other, it was perfectly consistent for him now to go one step far- 
ther, and, placing himself on the point of indifi'erence between 
the two, make the identity of the ideal and the real, of thought 
and being, as his principle. This principle Spinoza had already 
possessed before him. To this philosophy of identity Schelling 
now found himself peculiarly attracted. Instead of following 
Fichte's method, he now availed himself of that of Spinoza, the 
mathematical, to which he ascribed the greatest evidence of proof. 

III. Third Period: Period of Spinozism, or the Indif- 
ference OF THE Ideal and the Real. 



I! 



SCHELLING. 327 

The principal writings of this period are : — " Exposition of my 
System of Philosophy^'' (Journal for Speculative Physics, ii. 2) ; 
the second edition, with additions, of the ^' Ideas for a Philosophy 
of Nature^'''' 1803; the dialogue, ^^ Bruno ^ or concerning the Di- 
vine and the Natural Principle of Things^'''' 1802; ''' Lectures 
on the Method of Academical Study ^^'' 1803 ; three numbers of a 
" Neiv Journal for Speculative Physics^'' 1802-3. The charac- 
teristic of the new standpoint of Schelling, to which we now arrive, 
is perfectly exhibited in the definition of reason, which he places 
at the head of the first of the above-named writings ; I give to 
reason the name absolute, or the reason in so far as it is con- 
ceived as the total indifference of the subjective and the ohjec- 
tive. To think of reason is demanded of every man ; to think of 
it as absolute, and thus to reach the standpoint which I require, 
every thing must be abstracted from the thinking subject. To 
him who makes this abstraction, reason immediately ceases to be 
something subjective, as most men represent it ; neither can it be 
conceived as something objective, since an objective, or that 
which is thought, is only possible in opposition to that which 
thinks. We thus rise through this abstraction to the reality of 
things {zum wahren an-sich), which reality is precisely in the 
indifference point of the subjective and the objective. The stand- 
point of philosophy is the standpoint of reason ; its knowledge is 
a knowledge of things as they are in themselves, i. e. as they are in 
the reason. It is the nature of philosophy to destroy every distinc- 
tion which the imagination has mingled with the thinking, and 
to see in things only that through which they express the absolute 
reason, not regarding in them that which is simply an object for 
that reflection which expends itself on the laws of mechanism and 
in time. Besides reason there is nothing, and in it is every 
thing. Reason is the absolute. All objections to this principle 
can only arise from the fact, that men are in the habit of looking 
at things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Every 
thing which is, is in essence like the reason, and is one with it. 
It is not the reason which posits something external to itself, 
but only the false use of reason, which is connected with the 



828 



A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



incapacity of forgetting the subjective in itself. The reason is 
absolutely one and like itself. The highest law for the being 
of reason, and since there is nothing besides reason, the high- 
est law for all being, is the law of identity. Between subject 
and object therefore — since it is one and the same absolutei 
identity which displays itself in both — there can be no differ-' 
ence except a quantitative difference (a difference of more or 
less), so that nothing is either simple object or simple subject, but 
in all things subject and object are united, this union being in 
different proportions, so that sometimes the subject and sometimes 
the object has the preponderance. But since the absolute is pure 
identity of subject and object, there can be no quantitative differ- 
ence except outside of the identity, i. e, in the finite. As the 
fundamental form of the infinite is A=A, so the scheme of the 
finite is A=B [i, e. the union of a subjective with another objec- 
tive in a different proportion). But, in reality, nothing is finite, 
because the identity is the only reality. So far as there is differ- 
ence in individual things, the identity exists in the form of indif- 
ference. If we could see together every thing which is, we should 
find in all the pure identity, because we should find in all a perfect 
quantitative equilibrium of subjectivity and objectivity. True, 
we find, in looking at individual objects, that sometimes the pre- 
ponderance is on one side and sometimes on the other, but in the 
whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is the absolute 
totality, the universe itself. There is in reality (an-sich) no indi- 
vidual being or thing. There is in reality nothing beyond the 
totality ; and if any thing beyond this is beheld, this can only 
happen by virtue of an arbitrary separation of the individual from 
the whole, which is done through reflection, and is the source of 
every error. The absolute identity is essentially the same in 
every part of the universe. Hence the universe may be conceived 
under the figure of a line, in the centre of which is the A=A, 

while at the end on one side is A=B, i. e. a transcendence of the 

+ 
subjective, and at the end on the other side is A==B, i. e. a trans- 
cendence of the objective, though this must be conceived so that a 



SCHELLING. 329 

relative identity may exist even in these extremes. The one side 
is the real or nature, the other side is the ideal. The real side 
developes itself according to three potences (a potence, or power, 
indicates a definite quantitative difference of subjectivity and ob- 
jectivity). (1) The first potence is matter and weight — the 
greatest preponderance of the object. (2) The second potence is 
light ( A'^), an inner — as weight is an outer — intuition of nature. 
The light is a higher rising of the subjective. It is the absolute 
identity itself. (3) The third potence is organism (A^), the 
common product of light and weight. Organism is just as 
original as matter. Inorganic nature, as such, does not exist : it 
is actually organized, and is, as it were, the universal germ out of 
which organization proceeds. The organization of every globe is 
but the inner evolution of the globe itself; the earth itself, by its 
own evolving, becomes animal and plant. The organic world has 
not formed itself out of the inorganic, but has been at least poten- 
tially present in it from the beginning. That matter which lies 
before us, apparently inorganic, is the residuum of organic meta- 
morphoses, which could not become organic. The human brain 
is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis 
of the earth. From the above, Schelling adds, it must be per- 
ceived that we affirm an inner identity of all things, and a poten- 
tial presence of every thing in every other, and therefore even the 
so-called dead matter may be viewed only as a sleeping-world of 
animals and plants, which, in some' period, the absolute identity 
may animate and raise to life. At this point Schelling stops sud- 
denly, without developing further the three potences of the ideal 
series, corresponding to those of the real. Elsewhere he com- 
pletes the work by setting up the following three potences of the 
ideal series : (1) Knowledge, the potence of reflection ; (2) Action, 
the potence of subsumption ; (3) the Keason as the unity of re- 
flection and subsumptioa. These three potences represent them- 
selves : (1) as the true, the imprinting of the matter in the form; 

(2) as the good, or the imprinting of the form in the matter ; 

(3) as the beautiful, or the work of art, the absolute blending to- 
gether of form and matter. 



330 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Sclielling sought also to furnish himself with a new method 
for knowing the absolute identity. Neither the analytic nor the 
synthetical method seems to him suitable for this, since both are 
only a finite knowledge. Gradually, also, he abandoned the 
mathematical method. The logical forms of the ordinary method 
of knowledge, and even the ordinary metaphysical categories, were 
now insufficient for him. Schelling now places the intellectual 
intuition as the starting point of true knowledge. Intuition, in 
general, is an equal positing of thought and being. When I be- 
hold an object, the being of the object and my thought of the 
object is for me absolutely the same. But in the ordinary intui- 
tion, some separate sensible being is posited as one with the 
thought. But in the intellectual or rational intuition, being in 
general, and every being is made identical with the thought, and 
the absolute suhj ect-obj ect is beheld. The intellectual intuition 
is absolute knowledge, and as such it can only be conceived as 
that in which thought and being are not opposed to each other. 
It is the beginning and the first step towards philosophy to behold, 
immediately and intellectually within thyself, that same indiffer- 
ence of the ideal and the real which thou beholdest projected as 
it were from thyself in space and time. This absolutely absolute 
mode of knowledge is wholly and entirely in the absolute itself. 
That it can never become taught is clear. It cannot, moreover, 
be seen why philosophy is bound to have special regard to the 
unattainable. It seems much more fitting to make so complete a 
separation on every side between the entrance to philosophy and 
the common knowledge, that no road nor track shall lead from the 
latter to the former. The absolute mode of knowledge, like the 
truth which it contains, has no true opposition outside of itself, 
and as it cannot be demonstrated by any intelligent being, so 
nothing can be set up in opposition to it by any. — Schelling has 
attempted to bring the intellectual intuition into a method, and 
has named this method construction. The possibility and the 
necessity of the constructive method is based upon the fact that 
the absolute is in all, and that all is the absolute. Construction 
is nothing other than the proving that the whole is absolutely ex- 



li 



SCHELLING. 331 

pressed in every particular relation and object. To construe an 
object, pbilosopbically, is to prove that in this object the whole 
inner structure of the absolute repeats itself. 

In Schelling's ^' Lectures on the Method of Academical 
Study^^ (delivered in 1802, and published in 1803), he sought to 
treat encyclopaediacally, every philosophical discipline from the 
given standpoint of identity or indifference. They furnish a con- 
nected and popular exposition of the outlines of his philosophy, in 
the form of a critical modelling of the studies of the university 
course. The most noticeable feature in them is Schelling's attempt 
at a historical construction of Christianity, The incarnation of 
God is an incarnation from eternity. The eternal Son of God, 
born from the essence of the father of all things, is the finite itself, 
as it is in the eternal intuition of God. Christ is only the his- 
torical and phenomenal pinnacle of the incarnation ; as an indi- 
vidual, he is a person wholly conceivable from the circumstances 
of the age in which he appeared. Since God is eternally outside 
of all time, it is inconceivable that he should have assumed a 
human nature at any definite moment of time. The temporal 
form of Christianity, the exoteric Christianity does not correspond 
to its idea, and has its perfection yet to be hoped for. A chief 
hindrance to the perfection of Christianity, was, and is the so- 
called Bible, which, moreover, is far inferior to other religious 
writings, in a genuine religious content. The future must bring 
a new birth of the esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher form 
of religion, in which philosophy, religion and poesy shall melt 
together in unity. — This latter remark contains already an intima- 
tion of the '• Philosophy of Bevelation^'^ a work subsequently 
written by Schelling, and which exhibited many of the principles 
current in the age of the apostle John. In the work we are now 
considering, there are also many other points which correspond to 
this later standpoint of Schelling. Thus he places at the summit 
of history a kind of golden age. It is inconceivable, he says, that 
man as he now appears, should have raised himself through him- 
self from instinct to consciousness, from animality to rationality. 
Another human race, must, therefore, have preceded the present, 



332 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which the old saga have immortalized under the form of gods and 
heroes. The first origin of religion and culture is only conceiva- 
ble through the instruction of higher natures. I hold the condi- 
tion of culture as the first condition of the human race, and con- 
siderer the first foundation of states, sciences, religion and arts as 
cotemporary, or rather as one thing : so that all these were not 
truly separate, but in the completest interpenetration, as it will be 
again in the final consummati'^n. Schelling is no more than con- i j 
sistent when he accordingly apprehends the symbols of mythology f 11 
which we meet with at the beginning of history, as disclosures of 
the highest wisdom. There is here also a step towards his sub- 
sequent " Pliiloso;p1iy of Mythology ^ 

The mystical element revealed in these expressions of Schelling 
gained continually a greater prominence with him. Its growth 
was partly connected with his fruitless search after an absolute 
method, and a fitting form in which he might have satisfactorily 
expressed his philosophic intuitions. All noble mysticism rests 
on the incapacity of adequately expressing an infinite content in 
the form of a conception. So Schelling, after he had been rest- 
lessly tossed about in every method, soon gave up also his method 
of construction, and abandoned himself wholly to the unlimited 
current of his fancy. But though this was partly the cause of 
his mysticism, it is also true that his philosophical standpoint was 
gradually undergoing a change. From the speculative science of 
nature, he was gradually passing over more and more into the 
philosophy of mind, by which the determination of the absolute 
in his conception became changed. While he had previously de- 
termined the absolute as the indiff'erence of the ideal and the real, 
he now gives a preponderance to the ideal over the real, and makes 
ideality the fundamental determination of the absolute. The 
first is the ideal ; secondly, the ideal determines itself in itself to 
the real, and the real as such is the third. The earlier harmony 
of mind and matter is dissolved : matter appears now as the nega- 
tive of mind. Since Schelling in this way distinguishes the uni- 
verse from the absolute as its counterpart, we see that he leaves 



i 



SCHELLING. 333 

decidedly the basis of Spinozism on which he had previously 
stood, and places himself on a new standpoint. 

IV. Fourth Period : the Direction of Schelling's Phi- 
losophy AS Mystical and allied to New-Platonism. 

The writings of this period are : — '' Philosophy and Beligion,^^ 
i 804. " Exposition of the true relation of the Philosophy of 
Nature to the improved Theory of Fichte,^^ 1806 ; " Medical 
Annual " (published in company with Marcus) 1805-1808. — As 
has already been said, the absolute and the universe were, on the 
standpoint of indiiFerence, identical. Nature and history were 
immediate manifestations of the absolute. But now Schelling lays 
stress upon the difference between the two, and the independence of 
the world. This he expresses in a striking way in the first of the 
above named writings, by placing the origin of the world wholly 
after the manner of New-Platonism, in a breaking away or a fall- 
ing off from the absolute. From the absolute to the actual, there 
is no abiding transition ; the origin of the sensible world is only 
conceivable as a complete breaking off ^^r saltum from the abso- 
lute. The absolute is the only real, finite things are not real ] 
they can, therefore, have their ground in no reality imparted to 
them from the absolute, but only in a separation and complete 
falling away from the absolute. The reconciliation of this fall, 
and the manifestation of God made complete, is the final cause of 
history. With this idea there are also connected other represen- 
tations borrowed from New-Platonism, which Schelling brings out 
in the same work. He speaks in it of the descent of the soul 
from intellectuality, to the world of sense, and like the Platonic 
myth he allows this fall of souls to be a punishment for their self- 
hood (pride) ; he speaks also in connection with this of a regenera- 
tion, or transmigration of souls, by which they either begin a 
higher life on a better sphere, or intoxicated with matter, they are 
driven down to a still lower abode, according as they have in the 
present life laid aside more or less of their selfhood, and become 
purified in a greater or less degree, to an identity with the infi- 
nite ; but we are especially reminded of New-Platonism by the high 
place and the mystical and symbolical significance, which Schelling 



334 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

gives in this work to the Greek mysteries (as did Bruno), and the 
view that if religion would be held in its pure ideality, it can only 
exist as exoteric, or in the form of mysteries. — This notion of a 
higher blending together of religion and philosophy goes through 
all the writings of this period. All true experience, says Schel- 
ling in the " Medical Annual^'''' is religious. The existence of 
God is an empirical truth, and the ground of all experience. 
True, religion is not philosophy, but the philosophy which does 
not unite in sacred harmony, religion with science, were unworthy 
of the name. True, I know something higher than science. And 
if science has only these two ways open before it to knowledge, 
viz., that of analysis or abstraction, and that of synthetic deriva- 
tion, then we deny all science of the absolute. Speculation is 
every thing, i. e. a beholding, a contemplation of that which is in 
God. Science itself has worth only so far as it is speculative, i, e. 
only so far as it is a contemplation of God as he is. But the time 
will come when the sciences shall more and more cease, and 
immediate knowledge take their place. The mortal eye closes 
only in the highest science, where it is no longer the man who sees, 
but the eternal beholding which has now become seeing in him. 

With this theosophic view of the world, Schelling was led to 
pay attention to the earlier mystics. He began to study their 
writings. He answered the charge of mysticism in his controversy 
with Fichte as follows : — Among the learned of the last century, 
there was a tacit agreement never to go beyond a certain height, 
and, therefore, the genuine spirit of science was given up to the 
unlearned. These, because they were uneducated and had drawn 
upon themselves the jealousy of the learned, were called fanat- 
ics. But many a philosopher by profession might well have ex- 
changed all his rhetoric for the fulness of mind and heart which 
abound in the writings of such fanatics. Therefore I am not 
ashamed of the name of such a fanatic. I will even seek to make 
this reproach true ; if I have not hitherto studied the writings of 
these men correctly, it has been owing to negligence. 

Schelling did not omit to verify these words. There were 
some special mental affinities between himself and Jacob Boehme^ 



SCHELT.ING. 335 

with whom he now became more and more closely joined. A 
study of his writings is indeed indicated in Schelling's works of 
the present period. One of the most famous of Schelling's writ- 
ings, his theory of freedom, which appeared after this (" Fhiloso- 
phische Uniersiichiingen uher das Wesen der menschlichen 
Freiheit,'^^ 1809), is composed entirely in the spirit of Jacob 
Boehme. We begin with it a new period of Schelling's philoso- 
phizing, where the ivill is affirmed as the essence of God, and we 
have thus a new definition of the absolute differing from every 
previous one. 

V. Fifth Period : — Attempt at a Theogony and Cosmogo- 
ny AFTER THE MaNNER OF JaCOB BoEHME. 

Schelling had much in common with Jacob Boehme. Both con- 
sidered the speculative cognition as a kind of immediate intuition. 
Both made use of forms which mingled the abstract and the sen- 
suous, and interpenetrated the definiteness of logic with the coloring 
of fancy. Both, in fine, were speculatively in close contact. The 
self-duplication of the absolute was a fundamental thought of 
Boehme. He started with the principle, that the divine essence 
was the indeterminable, infinite, and inconceivable, the absence of 
ground ( Ungrund), This absence of ground now projects itself in 
a proper feeling of its abstract and infinite essence, into the finite, 
i. e. into a ground, or the centre of nature, in the dark womb of 
which qualities are produced, from whose harsh collision the light- 
ning streams forth, which, as mind or principle of light, is des- 
tined to rule and explain the struggling powers of nature, so that 
the Grod who has been raised from the absence of ground through 
a ground to the light of the mind, may henceforth move in an 
eternal kingdom of joy. This theogony of Jacob Boehme is in 
striking accord with the present standpoint of Schelling. As 
Boehme had apprehended the absolute as the indeterminable ab- 
sence of ground, so had Schelling in his earlier writings appre- 
hended it as indifterence. As Boehme had distinguished this ab- 
sence of ground from a ground, or from nature and from God, as 
the light of minds, so had Schelling, in the writings of the last 
period, apprehended the absolute as a self-renunciation, and a re- 



336 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



1 



turn back from this renunciation into a higher unity with itself. 
We have here the three chief elements of that history of God, 
around which Schelling's essay on freedom turns: (1) God as 
indiflference, or the absence of ground ; (2) God as duplication 
into ground and existence, real and ideal ; (3) Reconciliation of 
this duplication, and elevation of the original indifference to iden- 
tity. The first element of ihe divine life is that of pure indiffer- 
ence, or indistinguishableness. This, which precedes every thing 
existing, may be called the original ground, or the absence of 
ground. The absence of ground is not a product of opposites, 
nor are they contained implicite in it, but it is a proper essence 
separate from every opposite, and having no predicate but that of 
predicatelessness. Real and ideal, darkness and light, can never 
be predicated of the absence of ground as opposites ; they can 
only be affirmed of it as not-opposites in a neither-nor. From 
this indifference now rises the duality : the absence of ground 
separates into two co-eternal beginnings, so that ground and ex- 
istence may become one through love, and the indeterminable and 
lifeless indifference may rise to a determinate and living identity. 
Since nothing is before or external to God, he must have the 
ground of his existence in himself. But this ground is not sim- 
ply logical, as conception, but real, as something which is actual- 
ly to be distinguished in God from existence ; it is nature in God, 
an essence inseparable indeed from him, but yet distinct. Hence 
we cannot assign to this ground understanding and will, but only 
desire after this ; it is the longing to produce itself. But in that 
this ground moves in its longing according to obscure and un- 
certain laws like a swelling sea, there is, self-begotten in God, 
another and reflexive motion, an inner representation by which he 
beholds himself in his image. This representation is the eternal 
word in God, which rises as light in the darkness of the ground, 
and endows its blind longing with understanding. This under- 
standing, united with the ground, becomes pre-creating will. Its 
work is to give order to nature, and to regulate the hitherto un- 
regulated ground ; and from this explanation of the real through 
the ideal, comes the creation of the world. The development of 



SCHELLIl^G. 337 

the world has two stadia : ( 1 ) the travail of light, or the pro- 
gressive development of nature to man ; (2) the travail of mind, 
or the development of mind in history. 

(1.) The progressive development of nature proceeds from a 
conflict of the ground with the understanding. The ground 
originally sought to produce every thing solely from itself, but 
its products had no consistence without the understanding, and 
went again to the ground, a creation which we see exhibited in 
the extinct classes of animals and plants of the pre- Adamite 
world. But consecutively and gradually, the ground admitted 
the work of the understanding, and every such step towards light 
is indicated by a new class of nature's beings. In every creature 
of nature we must, therefore, distinguish two principles : first, 
the obscure principle through which the creatures of nature are 
separate from God, and have a particular will ; second, the divine 
principle of the understanding, of the universal will. With irra- 
tional creatures of nature, however, these two principles are not 
yet brought to unity ; but the particular will is simple seeking 
and desire, while the universal will, without the individual will, 
reigns as an external power of nature, as controlling instinct. 

(2.) The two principles, the particular and the universal will, 
are first united in man as they are in the absolute : but in God 
they are united inseparably, and in man separably, for otherwise 
God could not reveal himself in man. It is even this separable- 
ness of the universal will, and the particular will, which makes 
good and evil possible. The good is the subjection of the par- 
ticular will to the universal will, and the reverse of this right 
relation is evil. Human freedom consists in this possibility of 
good and evil. The empirical man, however, is not free, but his 
whole empirical condition is posited by a previous act of intelli- 
gence. The man must act just as he does, but is nevertheless 
free, because he has from eternity freely made himself that which 
he now necessarily is. The history of the human race is founded 
for the most part on the struggle of the individual will with the 
universal will, as the history of nature is founded on the struggle 
of the ground with the understanding. The different stages 
15 



338 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

through which evil, as a historical power, takes its way in conflict 
with love, constitute the periods of the world's history. Chris- 
tianity is the centre of history : in Christ, the principle of love 
came in personal contact with incarnate evil : Christ was the 
mediator to reconcile on the highest stage the creation with God ; 
for that which is personal can alone redeem the personal. The _ 
end of history is the reconciliation of the particular will and love, 1 1 
the prevalence of the universal will, so that God shall be all in 
all. The original indifference is thus elevated to identity. 

Schelling has given a farther justification of this his idea of 
God, in his controversial pamphlet against Jacobi, (1812). The 
charge of naturalism which Jacobi made against him, he sought to 
refute by showing how the true idea of God was a union of 
naturalism and theism. Naturalism seeks to conceive of God as | 
ground of the world (immanent), while theism would view him as 
the world's cause (transcendent) : the true course is to unite both 
determinations. God is at the same time ground and cause. It 
no way contradicts the conception of God to affirm that, so far as 
he reveals himself, he developes himself from himself, advancing 
from the imperfect to the perfect : the imperfect is in fact the 
perfect itself, only in a state of becoming. It is necessary that 
this becoming should be by stages, in order that the fulness of the 
perfect may appear on all sides. If there were no obscure ground, 
no nature, no negative principle in God, we could not speak of a 
consciousness of God. So long as the God of modern theism 
remains the simple essence which ought to be purely essential, 
but which in fact is without essence, so long as an actual twofold- 
ness is not recognized in God, and a limiting and denying energy 
(a nature, a negative principle) is not placed in opposition to the 
extending and affirming energy in God, so long will science be 
entitled to make its denial of a personal God. It is universally 
and essentially impossible to conceive of a being with conscious- 
ness, which has not been brought into limit by some denying energy 
within himself — as universally and essentially impossible as to 
conceive of a circle without a centre. 

VI, Since the essay against Jacobi, which in its philosophical 



TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 339 

content accords mainly with his theory of freedom, Schelling has 
not made public any thing of importance. He has often announced 
a work entitled '' Die Weltalter^'''' which should contain a com- 
plete and elaborate exposition of his philosophy, but has always 
withdrawn it before its appearance. Paidus has surreptitiously 
brought his later Berlin lectures before the public in a manner 
for which he has been greatly blamed : but since this publication 
is not recognized by Schelling himself, it cannot be used as an 
authentic source of knowledge of his philosophy. During this 
long period, Schelling has published only two articles of a philo- 
sophical content : '' On the Deities of Samotlfiracos^'' 1815, and 
a ^' Critical Preface'^'' to Beckerh translation of a preface of 
Cousin^ 1834. Both articles are very characteristic of the pre- 
sent standpoint of Schelling's philosophizing — he himself calls his 
present philosophy Positive Philoso;phy^ or the Philosophy of My- 
thology and Bev elation^ — but as they give only intimations of 
this, and do not reach a complete exposition, they do not admit 
of being used for our purpose. 



SECTION XLI V. 

TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 

The great want of Schelling's philosophizing, was its inability 
to furnish a suitable form for the philosophic content. Schelling 
went through the list of all methods, and at last abandoned all. 
But this absence of method into which he ultimately sank, contra- 
dicted the very principle of his philosophizing. If thought and 
being are identical, yet form and content cannot be indifferent in 
respect to each other. On the standpoint of absolute knowledge, 
there must be found for the absolute content an absolute form, 
which shall be identical with the content. This is the position 
assumed by Hegel. Hegel has fused the content of Schelling's 
philosophy by means of the absolute method. 



340 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Hegel sprang as truly from Fichte as from Schelling ; the 
origin of his system is found in both. His method is essentially 
that of Fichte, but his general philosophical standpoint is Schell- 
ing's. He has combined both Fichte and Schellicg. 

Hegel has himself, in his '' Phenomenology^'''' the first work in 
which he appeared as a philosopher on his own hook, having pre- 
viously been considered as an adherent of Schelling — clearly ex- 
pressed his difi'erence from Schelling, which he comprehensively 
affirms in the following three hits [Schlagivorte): — In Schelling's 
philosophy, the absolute is, as it were, shot out of a pistol ; it is 
only the night in which every cow looks black ; when it is widened 
to a system, it is like the course of a painter, who has on his 
palette but two colors, red and green, and who would cover a 
surface with the former when a historical piece was demanded, 
and with the latter when a landscape was required. The first of 
these charges refers to the mode of attaining the idea of the abso- 
lute, viz., immediately, through intellectual intuition ; this leap 
Hegel changes, in his Phenomenology^ to a regular transit, proceed- 
ing step by step. The second charge relates to the way in which 
the absolute thus gained is conceived and expressed, viz., simply 
as the absence of all finite distinctions, and not as the immanent 
positing of a system of distinctions within itself. Hegel declares 
that every thing depends upon apprehending and expressing the 
true not as substance {i, e. as negation of determinateness), but as 
subject (as a positing and producing of finite distinction). The 
third charge has to do with Schelling's manner of carrying out his 
principle through the concrete content of the facts given in the 
natural and intellectual worlds, viz., by the application of a ready- 
made schema (the opposition of the ideal and the real) to the 
objects, instead of sufi'ering them to unfold and separate them- 
selves from themselves. The school of Schelling was especially 
given to this schematizing formalism, and that which Hegel re- 
marks, in the introduction to his Phenomenology^ may very well be 
applied to it : " If the formalism of a philosophy of nature should 
happen to teach that the understanding is electricity, or that the 
animate is nitrogen, the inexperienced might look upon such in- 



TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 341 

structions with deep amazement, and perhaps revere them as dis- 
playing the marks of profound genius. But the trick of such a 
wisdom is as readily learned as it is easily practised ; its repetition 
is as insufferable as the repetition of a discovered feat of legerde- 
main. This method of affixing to every thing heavenly and 
earthly, to all natural and intellectual forms, the two determina- 
tions of the universal scheme, makes the universe like a grocer's 
shop, in which a row of closed jars stand with their labels pasted 
on them. 

The point, therefore, of greatest difference between Schelling 
and Hegel is their philosophical method, and this at the same 
time forms the bond of close connection which unites Hegel with 
Ficbte. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis — this was the method by 
which Fichte had sought to deduce all being from the Ego, and 
in precisely the same way Hegel deduces all being — ^the intellec- 
tual and natural universe — from the thought, only with this dif- 
ference, that with him that which was idealistically deduced had 
at the same time an objective reality. While the practical ideal- 
ism of Fichte stood related to the objective world as a producer, 
and the ordinary empiricism as a beholder, yet with Hegel the 
speculative (conceiving) reason is at the same time productive and 
beholding. I produce (for myself) that which is (in itself) without 
my producing. The result of philosophy, says Hegel, is the 
thought which is by itself, and which comprehends in itself the 
univ^erse, and changes it into an intelligent world. To raise all 
being to being in the consciousness, to knowledge, is the problem 
and the goal of philozophizing, and this goal is reached when the 
mind has become able to beget the whole objective world from 
itself. 

In his first great work, the '' Phenomenology of the Mind,^^ 
Hegel sought to establish the standpoint of absolute knowledge or 
absolute idealism. He furnishes in this work a history of the 
phenomenal consciousness (whence its title), a development of the 
formative epochs of the consciousness in its progress to philo- 
sophical knowledge. The inner development of consciousness 
consists in this, viz., that the peculiar condition in which it finds 



342 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

itself becomes objectified (or conscious), and through this know- 
ledge of its own being the consciousness rises ever a new step to 
a higher condition. The " Phenomenology " seeks to show how, 
and out of what necessity the consciousness advances from step to 
step, from reality to being per se {vom Ansich zum Fursich), 
from being to knowledge. The author begins with the immediate 
consciousness as the lowest step. He entitled this section : " The 
Sensuous Certainty, or the This and the Mine^ At this stage 
the question is asked the Ego : what is this, or what is here ? and 
it answers, e, g. the tree ; and to the question, what is now ? it 
answers now is the night. But if we turn ourselves around, here 
is not a tree but a house ; and if we write down the second answer, 
and look at it again after a little time, we find that now is no 
longer night but mid-day. The this becomes, therefore, a not- 
this, i. e. a universal. And very naturally ; for if I say : this 
piece of paper, yet each and every paper is a this piece of paper, 
and I have only said the universal. By such inner dialectics the 
whole field of the immediate certainty of the sense in perception 
is gone over. In this way — since every formative step (every 
form) of the consciousness of the philosophizing subject is in- 
volved in contradictions, and is carried by this immanent dialec- 
tics to a higher form of consciousness — this process of develop- 
ment goes on till the contradiction is destroyed, i, e. till all 
strangeness between subject and object disappears, and the mind 
rises to a perfect self-knowledge and self-certainty. To charac- 
terize briefly the difierent steps of this process, we might say that 
the consciousness is first found as a certainty of the sense, or as 
the this and the mine ; next as perception, which apprehends the 
objective as a thing with its properties ; and then as understand- 
ing, i. e. apprehending the objects as being reflected in itself, or 
distinguishing between power and expression, being and manifes- 
tation, outer and inner. From this point the consciousness, which 
has only recognized itself, its own pure being in its objects and 
their determinations, and for which therefore every other thing 
than itself has, as such, no significance, becomes the self-like Ego, 
and rises to the truth and certainty of itself to self-consciousness. 



HEGEL. 343 

The self-consciousness become universal, or as reason, now tra- 
verses also a series of development-steps, until it manifests itself 
as spirit, as the reason which, in accord with all rationality, and 
satisfied with the rational world without, extends itself over the 
natural and intellectual universe as its kingdom, in which it finds 
itself at home. Mind now passes through its stages of uncon- 
strained morality, culture and refinement, ethics and the ethical 
view of the world to religion; and religion itself in its perfection, 
as revealed religion becomes absolute knowledge. At this last 
stage being and thought are no more separate, being is no longer 
an object for the thought, but the thought itself is the object of 
the thought. Science is nothing other than the true knowledge 
of the mind concerning itself In the conclusion of the " P^e- 
nomenology ^"^ Hegel casts the following retrospect on the course 
which he has laid down : '^ The goal which is to be reached, viz., 
absolute knowledge, or the mind knowing itself as mind, requires 
us to take notice of minds as they are in themselves, and the 
organization of their kingdom. These elements are preserved, 
and furnished to us either by history, where we look at the side 
of the mind's free existence as it accidentally appears, or by the 
science of phenomenal knowledge, where we look at the side of 
the mind's ideal organization. These two sources taken together, 
as the ideal history, give us the real history and the true being 
of the absolute spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of his 
throne, without which he were lifeless and alone ; only ^ from the 
cup of this kingdom of minds does there stream forth for him his 
infinity.' " 



SECTION XLV. 

HEGEL. 

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart, the 
27th of August, 1770. In his eighteenth year he entered the 
university of Tubingen, in order to devote himself to the study 



344 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of theology. During his course of study here, he attracted no 
marked attention ; Schelling, who was his junior in years, shone 
far beyond all his cotemporaries. After leaving Tubingen, he 
took a situation as private tutor, first in Switzerland, and after- 
wards in Frankfort-on-the-Main till 1801, when he settled down 
at Jena. At first he was regarded as a disciple, and defender of 
Schelling's philosophy, and as such he wrote in 1801 his first 
minor treatise on the " Difference hetiueen Fichte and Schelling.^^ 
Soon afterwards he became associated with Schelling in publish- 
ing the ^' Critical Journal of Philosophy j^^ 1802-3, for which he 
furnished a number of important articles. His labors as an aca- 
demical teacher met at first with but little encouragement ; he 
gave his first lecture to only four hearers. Yet in 1806 he 
became professor in the university, though the political catastro- 
phe in which the country was soon afterwards involved, deprived 
him again of the place. Amid the cannon's thunder of the battle 
of Jena, he finished ^' the Phenomenology of the Mind^^^ his first 
great and independent work, the crown of his Jena labors. He 
was subsequently in the habit of calling this book which appeared 
in 1807, his " voyage of discovery." From Jena, Hegel for want 
of the means of subsistence went to Bamberg, where for two years 
he was editor of a political journal published there. In the 
fall of 1808, he became rector of the gymnasium at Nuremberg. 
In this situation he wrote his Logic, 1812-16. All his works 
were produced slowly, and he first properly began his literary ac- 
tivity as Schelling finished his. In 1816, he received a call to a 
professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg, where in 1817 he pub- 
lished his " Encyclopoedia of ihe philosophical sciences,'''^ in which 
for the first time he showed the whole circuit of his system. But 
his peculiar fame, and his far-reaching activity, dates first from 
his call to Berlin in 1818. It was at Berlin that he surrounded 
himself with an extensive and very actively scientific school, and 
where through his connection with the Prussian government he 
gained a political influence and acquired a reputation for his phi- 
losophy, as the philosophy of the State, though this neither speaks 
favorably for its inner purity, nor its moral credit. Yet in his 



HEGEL. 345 

" Philosophy of JRights^'^^ which appeared in 1821 (a time, to be 
sure, when the Prussian State had not yet shown any decidedly 
anti-constitutional tendency), Hegel does not deny the political 
demands of the present age ; he declares in favor of popular re- 
presentation, freedom of the press, and publicity of judicial pro- 
ceedings, trial by jury, and an administrative independence of 
corporations. 

In Berlin, Hegel gave lectures upon almost every branch of 
philosophy, and these have been published by his disciples and 
friends after his death. His manner as a lecturer was stammer- 
ing, clumsy, and unadorned, but was still not without a peculiar 
attraction as the immediate expression of profound thoughtfulness. 
His social intercourse was more with the uncultivated than with 
the learned ; he was not fond of shining as a genius in social cir- 
cles. In 1829 he became rector of the university, an office which 
he administered in a more practical manner than Fichte had 
done. Hegel died with the cholera, Nov. 14th, 1831, the day also 
of Leibnitz's death. He rests in the same churchyard with 
Solger and Fichte, near by the latter, and not far from the former. 
His writings and lectures form seventeen volumes which have ap- 
peared since 1832 : Vol. I. Minor. Articles ; II. Phenomenology ; 
III-Y. Logic; VI.-VIL Encyclopsedia ; VIII. Philosphy of 
Rights; IX. Philosophy of History; X. Esthetics; XI.-XII. Phi- 
losophy of Religion ; XIII.-XV. History of Philosophy ; XVI- 
XVII. Miscellanies. His life has been written by Rosenkranz. 

Hegel's system may be divided in a number of ways. The 
best mode is by connecting it with Schelling. Schellings's abso- 
lute was the identity or the indifference point of the ideal and the 
real. From this Hegel's threefold division immediately follows. 
(1) The exposition of the indifference point, the development of 
the pure conceptions or determinations in thought, which lie at the 
basis of all natural and intellectual life; in other words, the logi- 
cal unfolding of the absolute, — the science of logic, (2) The 
development of the real world or of nature — natural philosophy. 
(3) The development of the ideal world, or of mind as it shows 
itself concretely in right, morals, the state, art, religion, and 
15* 



346 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

science. — Philosophy of Mind. These three parts of the system 
represent the three elements of the absolute method, thesis, anti- 
thesis, synthesis. The absolute is at first pure, and immaterial 
thought ; secondly, it is differentiation {Andersseyn) of the pure 
thought or its i\rQ.va^i\o\i{verzerrung) in space and time — nature ; 
thirdly, it returns from this self-estrangement to itself, destroys 
the differentiation of nature, and thus becomes actual self-know- 
ing thought or mind. 

I. Science of Logic. — The Hegelian logic is the scientific 
exposition and development of the pure conceptions of reason, 
those conceptions or categories which- lie at the basis of all thought 
and being, and which determine the subjective knowledge as 
truly as they form the indwelling soul of the objective reality; 
in a word, those ideas in which the ideal and the real have their 
point of coincidence. The domain of logic, says Hegel, is the 
truth, as it is 'per se in its native character. It is as Hegel him- 
self figuratively expresses it, the representation of Grod as he is 
in his eternal being, before the creation of the world or a 
finite mind. In this respect it is, to be sure, a domain of shad- 
ows ; but these shadows are, on the other hand, those simple 
essences freed from all sensuous matters, in whose diamond net 
the whole universe is constructed. 

Different philosophers had already made a thankworthy be- 
ginning towards collecting and examining the pure conceptions of 
the reason, as Aristotle in his categories, Wolff in his ontology, 
and Kant in his transcendental analytics. But they had neither 
completely collected, nor critically sifted, nor (Kant excepted) 
derived them from one principle, but had only taken them up em- 
pirically, and treated them lexicologically. But in opposition to 
this course, Hegel attempted, (1) to completely collect the pure 
art-conceptions ; (2) to critically sift them (?. e, to exclude every 
thing but pure thought) ; and (3) — which is the most character- 
istic peculiarity of the Hegelian logic — to derive these dialecti- 
cally from one another, and carry them out to an internally con- 
nected system of pure reason. Hegel starts with the view, that 
in every conception of the reason, every other is contained impU- 



HEGEL. 347 

cite^ and may be dialecticallj developed from it. Fichte had al- 
ready claimed that the reason must deduce the whole system of 
knowledge purely from itself, without any thing taken for granted ; 
that some principle must be sought which should be of itself cer- 
tain, and need no farther proof, and from which every thing else 
could be derived. Hegel holds fast to this thought. Starting 
from the simplest conception of reason, that of pure being, which 
needs no farther establishing, he seeks from this, by advancing 
from one conception ever to another and a richer one, to deduce 
the whole system of the pure knowledge of reason. The lever of 
this development is the dialectical method. 

Hegel's dialectical method is partly taken from Plato, and 
partly from Fichte. The conception of negation is Platonic. All 
negation, says Hegel, is position, affirmation. If a conception is 
negated, the result is not the pure nothing — a pure negative, but 
a concrete positive ; there results a new conception which extends 
around the negation of the preceding one. The negation of the one 
e. g. is the conception of the many. In this way Hegel makes nega- 
tion a vehicle for dialectical progress. Every pre-supposed concep- 
tion is denied, and from its negation a higher and richer conception 
is gained. This is connected with the method of Fichte, which 
posits a fundamental synthesis ; and by analyzing this, seeks its 
antitheses, and then unites again these antitheses through a second 
synthesis, — e, g. being, nothing, becoming, quality, quantity, 
measure, &c. This method, which is at the same time analytical 
and synthetical, Hegel has carried through the whole system of 
science. 

We now proceed to a brief survey of the Hegelian Logic. It 
is divided into three parts ; the doctrine of being ^ the doctrine of 
essence^ and the doctrine of conception. 

1. The Doctrine OF Being. (1.) Q^ia^^Y?/.— Science begins with 
the immediate and indeterminate conception of being. This, in its 
want of content and emptiness, is nothing more than a pure negation, 
a nothing. These two conceptions are thus as absolutely identical as 
they are absolutely opposed; each of the two disappears immediate- 
ly in its contrary. This oscillation of the two is the pure becoming^ 



348 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which, if it be a transition from nothing to being, we call arising. 
or, in the reverse case, we call it a departing. The still and sim- 
ple precipitate of this process of arising and departing, is exist- 
ence {Daseyn). Existence is being with a determinateness, or it 
is quality / more closely, it is reality or limited existence. Lim- 
ited existence excludes every other from itself. This reference 
to itself, which is seen through its negative relation to every other, 
we call being per se (Fursichseyn). Being per se which refers 
itself only to itself, and repels every other from itself, is the one. 
But, by means of this repelling, the one posits immediately many 
ones. But the many ones are not distinguished from each other. 
One is what the other is. The many are therefore one. But the 
one is just as truly the manifold. For its exclusion is the posit- 
ing of its contrary, or it posits itself thereby as manifold. By 
this dialectic of attraction and repulsion, quality passes over into 
quantity : for indifference in respect of distinction or qualitative 
determinateness is quantity. 

(2.) Quantity. — Quantity is determination of greatness, which, 
as such, is indifferent in respect of quality. In so far as the 
greatness contains many ones distinguishably within itself, it is a 
discrete, or has the element of discretion ; but on the other hand, 
in so far as the many ones are similar, and the greatness is thus 
indistinguishable, it is continuous, or has the element of con- 
tinuity. Each of these two determinations is at the same time 
identical with the other ; discretion cannot be conceived without 
continuity, nor continuity without discretion. The existence of 
quantity, or the limited quantity, is the quantum. The quan- 
tum has also manifoldness and unity in itself; it is the enumera- 
tion of the unities, i.. e. number. Corresponding to the quantum 
or the extensive greatness, is the intensive greatness or the degree. 
With the conception of degree, so far as degree is simple deter- 
minateness, quantity approaches quality again. The unity of 
quantity and quality is the measure. 

(3.) The measure is a qualitative quantum, a quantum on 
which the quality is dependent. An example of quantity deter- 
mining the quality of a definite object is found in the temperature 



HEGEL. 349 

of water, wliich decides whether the water shall remain water or 
turn to ice or steam. Here the quantum of heat actually consti- 
tutes the quality of the water. Quality and quantity are, there- 
fore, ideal determinations, perpetually turning around on one 
being, on a ihird^ which is distinguished from the immediate what 
and how much (quality and quantity) of a thing. This third is 
the essence^ which is the negation of every thing immediate, or 
quality independent of the immediate being. Essence is being 
in se, being divided in itself, a self-separation of being. Hence 
the twofoldness of all determinations of essence. 

2. The Doctrine of Essence. (1.) The Essence as such. 
The essence as reflected being is the reference to itself only as it is 
a reference to something other. We apply to this being the term 
reflected analogously with the reflection of light, which, when it 
falls on a mirror, is thrown back by it. As now the reflected light 
is, through its reference to another object, something mediated or 
posited, so the reflected being is that which is shown to be mediat- 
ed or grounded through another. From the fact that philosophy 
makes its problem to know the essence of thiogs, the immediate 
being of things is represented as a covering or curtain behind 
which the essence is concealed. If^ therefore, we speak of the 
essence of an object, the immediate being standing over against 
the essence (for without this the essence cannot be conceived), is 
set down to a mere negative, to an ap;pearance. The being ap- 
pears in the essence. The essence is, therefore, the being as 
appearance in itself. The essence when conceived in distinction 
from the appearance, gives the conception of the essential^ and 
that which only appears in the essence, is the essenceless, or the 
unessential. But since the essential has a being only in distinc- 
tion from the unessential, it follows that the latter is essential to 
the former, which needs its unessential just as much as the unes- 
sential needs it. Each of the two, therefore, appears in the other, 
or there takes place between them a reciprocal reference which we 
call reflection. We have, therefore, to do in this whole sphere 
with determinations of reflection, with determinations, each one 
of which refers to the other, and cannot be conceived without it 



350 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

{e. g. positive and negative, ground and sequence, thing and pro- 
perties, content and form, power and expression). We have, 
therefore, in the development of the essence, those same deter- 
minations which we found in the development of being, only no 
longer in an immediate, but in a reflected form. Instead of being 
and nothing, we have now the forms of the positive and negative ; 
instead of the there-existent {Daseyn)^ we now have existence. 

Essence is reflected being, a reference to itself, which, how- 
ever, is mediated through a reference to something other which 
appears in it. This reflected reference to itself we call identity 
(which is unsatisfactorily and abstractly expressed in the so-called 
first principle of thought, that A=A). This identity, as a nega- 
tivity referring itself to itself, as a repulsion of its own from Itself, 
contains essentially the determination of distinction. The imme- 
diate and external distinction is the difference. The essential dis- 
tinction, the distinction in itself, is the antithesis {positive and 
negative). The self-opposition of the essence is the contradiction. 
The antithesis of identity and distinction is put in agreement in 
the conception of the ground. Since now the essence distinguishes 
itself from itself, there is the essence as identical with itself or 
the ground^ and the essence as distinguished from itself or the 
sequence. In the category of ground and sequence the same 
thing, i. e, the essence, is twice posited ; the grounded and the 
ground are one. and the same content, which makes it difiicult to 
define the ground except through the sequence, or the sequence 
except through the ground. The two can, therefore, be divided 
only by a powerful abstraction ; but because the two are identi- 
cal, it is peculiarly a formalism to apply this category. If reflec- 
tion would inquire after a ground, it is because it would see the 
thing as it were in a twofold relation, once in its immediateness, 
and then as posited through a ground. 

(2.) Essence and Phenomenon. — The phenomenon is the ap- 
pearance which the essence fills, and which is hence no longer 
essenceless. There is no appearance without essence, and no 
essence which may not enter into phenomenon. It is one and the 
same content which at one time is taken as essence, and at another 



HEGEL. 351 

as phenomenon. In the phenomenal essence we recognize the 
positive element which has hitherto been called ground, but which 
we now name content^ and the negative element which we call the 
form. Every essence is a unity of content and form, i, e, U exists. ' 
In distinction from immediate being, we call that being which has 
proceeded from some ground, existence^ i. e. grounded being. 
When we view the essence as existing, we call it ihing. In the 
relation of a thing to ii^ properties we have a repetition of the re- 
lation of form and content. The properties show us the thing in 
respect of its form, but it is thing in respect of its content. The 
relation between the thing and its properties is commonly indica- 
ted by the verb to have {e. g. the thing has properties), in order 
to distinguish between the two. The essence as a negative refer- 
ence to itself, and as repelling itself from itself in order to a 
reflection in an alterum^ is power and expression. In this category, 
like all the other categories of essence, one and the same content 
is posited twice. The power can only be explained from the ex- 
pression, and the expression only from the power ; consequently 
every explanation of which this category avails itself, is tautolo- 
gical. To regard power as uncognizable, is only a self-deception 
of the understanding respecting its own doing. — A higher expres- 
sion for the category of power and expression is the category of 
inner and outer. The latter category stands higher than the 
former, because power needs some solicitation to express itself, 
but the inner is the essence spontaneously manifesting itself. 
Both of these, the inner and the outer, are also identical ; neither 
is without the other. That, e. g. which the man is internally in 
respect of his character, is he also externally in his action. The 
truth of this relation will be, therefore, the identity of inner and 
outer, of essence and phenomenon, viz. : 

(3.) Actuality. — Actuality must be added as a third to being 
and existence. In the actuality, the phenomenon is a complete 
and adequate manifestation of the essence. The true actuality 
is, therefore (in opposition to possihiliiij and contingency), a 
necessary being, a rational necessity. The well-known Hegelian 
sentence that every thing is rational, and every thing rational is 



352 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

actual, is seen in this apprehension of " actuality " to be a simple 
tautology. The necessary, when posited as its own ground, iden- 
tical with itself, is substance. The phenomenal side, the unessen- 
tial in the substance, and the contingent in the necessary, are acci- 
deuces. These are no longer related to the substance, as the 
phenomenon to the essence, or the outer to the inner, i. e, as an 
adequate manifestation ; they are only transitory affections of the 
substance, accidentally changing phenomenal forms, like sea waves 
on the water of the sea. They are not produced by the substance, 
but are rather destroyed in it. The relation of substance leads to 
the relation of cause. In the relation of cause there is one and 
the same thing posited on the one side as cause^ and on the other 
side as effect. The cause of warmth is warmth, and its effect is 
again warmth. The effect is a higher conception than the acci- 
dence, since it actually stands over against the cause, and the cause 
itself passes over into effect. So far, however, as each side in the 
relation of cause presupposes the other, we shall find the true 
relation one in which each side is at the same time cause and effect, 
i. e. reciprocal action. Reciprocal action is a higher relation 
than causality, because there is no pure causality. There is no 
effect without counteraction. We leave the province of essence 
with the category of reciprocal action. All the categories of 
essence had shown themselves as a duplex of two sides, but when 
we come to the category of reciprocal action, the opposition be- 
tween cause and effect is destroyed, and they meet together ; unity 
thus takes again the place of duplicity. We have, therefore, 
again a beiog which coincides with mediate being. This unity of 
being and essence, this inner or realized necessity, is the conception. 

3. The Doctrine of the Conception. — A conception is a 
rational necessity. We can only have a conception of that whose 
true necessity we have recognized. The conception is, therefore, 
the truly actual, the peculiar essence ; because it states as well 
that which is actual as that which should be. 

(1.) The subjective conception contains the elements of uni- 
versality (the conception of species), particularity (ground of 
classification, logical difference), and individuality (species — logi- 



ii 



HEGEL. 353 

cal difference). The conception is therefore a unity of that which 
is distinct. The self-separation of the conception is the judgment. 
In the judgment, the conception appears as self-excluding dual- 
ity. The twofoldness is seen in the difference between subject 
and predicate, and the unity in the copula. Progress in the dif- 
ferent forms of judgment, consists in this, viz., that the copula 
fills itself more and more with the conception. But thus the 
judgment passes over into the conclusion or inference, i, e, to the 
conception which is identical with itself through the conception. 
In the inference one conception is concluded with a third through 
a second. The different figures of the conclusion are the differ- 
erent steps in the self-mediation of the conception. The concep- 
tion is when it mediates itself with itself and the conclusion is no 
longer subjective ; it is no longer my act, but an objective rela- 
tion is fulfilled in it. 

(2.) Ohjectivity is a reality only of the conception. The ob- 
jective conception has* three steps,- — Mechanism^ or the indifferent 
relation of objects to each other ; Chemism, or the interpenetra- 
tion of objects and their neutralization ; Teleology, or the inner 
design of objects. The end accomplishing itself or the self-end is, 

(3.) The idea. — -The idea is the highest logical definition of 
the absolute. The immediate existence of the idea, we call life, 
or process of life. Every thing living is self-end immanent-end. 
The idea posited in its difference as a relation of objective and 
subjective, is the true and good. The true is the objective ration- 
ality subjectively posited; the good is the subjective rationality 
carried into the objectivity. Both conceptions together consti- 
tute the absolute idea, which is just as truly as it should be, 
i. e. the good is just as truly actualized as the true is living and 
self-realizing. 

The absolute and full idea is in space, because it discharges 
itself from itself, as its reflection; this its being in space is 
Nature. 

II. The Science of Nature. — Nature is the idea in the 
form of differentiation. It is the idea externalizing itself; it 
is the mind estranged from itself. The unity of the conception 



354 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

is therefore concealed in nature, and since philosophy makes it its 
problem to seek out the intelligence which is hidden in nature, 
and to pursue the process by which nature loses its own charac- 
ter and becomes mind, it should not forget that the essence of 
nature consists in being which has externalized itself, and that 
the products of nature neither have a reference to themselves, nor 
correspond to the conception, but grow up in unrestrained and 
unbridled contingency. Nature is a bacchanalian god who nei- 
ther bridles nor checks himself. It therefore represents no ideal 
succession, rising ever in regular order, but, on the contrary, it 
every where obliterates all essential limits by its doubtful struc- 
tures, which always defy every fixed classification. Because it is 
impossible to throw the determinations of the conception over 
nature, natural philosophy is forced at every point, as it were, to 
capitulate between the world of concrete individual structures, 
and the regulative of the speculative idea. 

Natural philosophy has its beginning, its course, and its end. 
It begins with the first or immediate determination of nature, 
with the abstract universality of its being extra sCj space and 
matter ; its end is the dissevering of the mind from nature in 
the form of a rational and self-conscious individuality — man ; the 
problem which it has to solve is, to show the intermediate link 
between these two extremes, and to follow out successively the in- 
creasingly successful struggles of nature to raise itself to self-con- 
sciousness, to man. In this process, nature passes through three 
principal stages. 

1. Mechanics, or matter and an ideal system of matter. Mat- 
ter is the being extra se [Aussersichseyn) of nature, in its 
most universal form. Yet it shows at the outset that tendency 
to being per se which forms the guiding thread of natural philos- 
ophy — gravity. Gravity is the being in se (Insichseyn) of mat- 
ter ; it is the desire of matter to come to itself, and shows the first 
trace of subjectivity. The centre of gravity of a body is the one 
which it seeks. This same tendency of bringing all the manifold 
unto being per se lies at the basis of the solar system and of uni- 
versal gravitation. The centrality which is the fundamental con- 



HEGEL. 355 

ception of gravity, becomes here a system, which is in fact a 
rational system so far as the form of the orbit, the rapidity of 
motion, or the time of revolution may be referred to mathematical 
laws. 

2. Physics. — But matter possesses no individuality. Even 
in astronomy it is not the bodies themselves, but only their geo- 
metrical relations which interest us. We have here at the outset 
to treat of quantitative and not yet of qualitative determinations. 
Yet in the solar system, matter has found its centre, itself. Its 
abstract and hollow being in se has resolved itself into form. 
Matter now, as possessing a quality, is an object of jpJiysics. In 
physics we have to do with matter which has particularized itself 
in a body, in an individuality. To this province belongs inor- 
ganic nature, its forms and reciprocal references. 

3. Organics. — Inorganic nature, which was the object of phys- 
ics, destroys itself in the chemical process. In the chemical pro- 
cess, the inorganic body loses all its properties (cohesion, color, 
shining, sound, transparency, &c.), and thus shows the evanes- 
cence of its existence and that relativity which is its being. This 
chemical process is overcome by the organic, the living process of 
nature. True, the living body is ever on the point of passing 
over to the chemical process; oxygen, hydrogen and salt, are 
always entering into a living organism, but their chemical action 
is always overcome ; the living body resists the chemical process 
till it dies. Life is self-preservation, self-end. While therefore 
nature in physics had risen to individuality, in organics, it pro- 
gresses to subjectivity. The idea, as life, represents itself in three 
stages. 

(1.) The general image of life in geological organism, or tho 
mineral kingdom. Yet the mineral kingdom is the result, and 
the residuum of a process of life and formation already passed.. 
The primitive rock is the stiffened crystal of life, and the geologi- 
cal earth is a giant corpse. The present life which produces itself 
eternally anew, breaks forth as the first moving of subjectivity, 

(2.) In the organism oi plants or the vegetahle kingdom. The 
plant rises indeed to a formative process, to a process of assimila- 



356 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion, and to a process of species. But it is not yet a totality per- 
fectly organized in itself. Each part of the plant is the whole in- 
dividual, each twig is the whole tree. The parts are related in- 
differently to each other ; the crown can become a root, and the root 
a crown. The plant, therefore, does not yet attain a true being M\ 
in se of individuality ; for, in order that this may be attained, an ■ ' 
absolute unity of the individual is necessary. This unity, which 
constitutes an individual and concrete subjectivity, is first seen in 

(3.) The animal organism, the animal kingdom. An unin- 
terrupted intus-susception, free motion and sensation, are first 
found in the animal organism. In its higher forms we find an 
inner warmth and a voice. In its highest form, man, nature, or 
rather the spirit, which works through nature, apprehends itself 
as conscious individuality, as Ego. The spirit thus become a free 
and rational self, has now completed its self-emancipation from 
nature. 

III. Philosophy of Mind. — 1. The Subjective Mind. — 
The mind is the truth of nature; it is being removed from its 
estrangement, and become identical with itself. Its formal es- 
sence, therefore, is freedom, the possibility of abstracting itself 
from every thing else ; its material essence is the capacity of 
manifesting itself as mind, as a conscious rationality, — of positing 
the intellectual universe as its kingdom, and of building a struc- 
ture of objective rationality. In order, however, to know itself, 
and every thing rational, — in order to posit nature more and more 
negatively, the mind, like nature, must pass through a series of 
stages or emancipative acts. As it comes from nature and rises 
from its externality to being, per se, it is at first soul or spirit of 
nature, and as such, it is an object of anthro;pology in a strict 
sense. As this spirit of nature, it sympathizes with the general 
planetary life of the earth, and is in this respect subject to diver- 
sity of climate, and change of seasons and days ; it sympathizes 
with the geographical portion of the world which it occupies, i, e., 
it is related to a diversity of race ; still farther, it bears a na- 
tional type, and is moreover determined by mode of life, forma- 
tion of the body, &c., while these natural conditions work also 



HEGEL. 357 

upon its intelligent and moral character. Lastly, we must here 
take notice of the way in which nature has determined the indi- 
vidual subject, i. e, his natural temperament, character, idiosyn- 
crasy, &c. To this belong the natural changes of life, age, sex- 
ual relation, sleep, and waking. In all this the mind is still 
buried in nature, and this middle condition between being per se 
and the sleep of nature, is sensation, the hollow forming of the 
mind in its unconscious and unenlightened (verstandlos) individ- 
uality. A higher stage of sensation is feeling, i. e. sensation in se, 
where being per se appears ; feeling in its completed form is self- 
feeling. Since the subject, in self-feeling, is buried in the pecu- 
liarity of his sensations, but at the same time concludes himself 
with himself, as a subjective one, the self-feeling is seen to be the 
preliminary step to consciousness. The Ego now appears as the 
shaft in which all these sensations, representations, cognitions and 
thoughts are preserved, which is with them all, and constitutes 
the centre in which they all come together. The mind as con- 
scious, as a conscious being per se, as Ego, is the object of the 
pheyiomenology of consciousness. 

The mind was individual, so long as it was interwoven with 
nature ; it is consciousness or Ego when it has divested itself of 
nature. When distinguishing itself from nature, the mind with- 
draws itself into itself, and that with which it was formerly inter- 
woven, and which gave it a peculiar (earthly, national, &c.) de- 
termination, stands now distinct from it, as its external world 
(earth, people, &c). The awaking of the Ego is thus the act by 
which the objective world, as such, is created ; while on the other 
hand, the Ego awakens to a conscious subjectivity only in the ob- 
jective world, and in distinction from it. The Ego, over against 
the objective world, is consciousness in the strict sense of the 
word. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness by passing 
through the stages of immediate sensuous consciousness, percep- 
tion, and understanding, and convincing itself in this its formative 
history, that it has only to do with itself, while it believed that it 
had to do with something objective. Again, self-consciousness 
becomes universal or rational self- consciousness, as follows : In 



358 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

its strivings to stamp the impress of the Ego upon the objective^ 
and thus make the objective subjective, it falls in conflict with 
other self-consciousnesses, and begins a war of extermination 
against them, but rises from this helium omnium contra omnesy as 
common consciousness, as the finding of the proper mean between 
command and obedience, i, e. as truly universal, i. e. rational self- 
consciousness. The rational self-consciousness is actually free, 
because, when related to another, it is really related to itself, and 
in all is still with itself; it has emancipated itself from nature. 
We have now mind as mind, divested of its naturalness and sub- 
jectivity, and as such, it is an object o{ Fneumatology. 

Mind is at first theoretical mind, or intelligence, and then 
practical mind, or will. It is theoretical in that it has to do with 
the rational as something given, and now posits it as its own ; it 
is practical in that it immediately wills the subjective content 
(truth), which it has as its own, to be freed from its one-sided 
subjective form, and transformed into an objective. The practi- 
cal mind is, so far, the truth of the theoretical. The theoretical 
mind, in its way to the practical, passes through the stages of in- 
tuition, representation, and thought ; and the will on its side 
forms itself into a free will through impulse, desire, and inclina- 
tion. The free will, as having a being in space {Daseyn)^ is the 
objective mind^ ^igtit, and the state. In right, morals and the 
state, the freedom and rationality, which are chosen by the will, 
take on an objective form. Every natural determination and im- 
pulse now becomes moralized, and comes up to view again as ethi- 
cal institute, as right and duty (the sexual impulse now appears 
as marriage, and the impulse of revenge as civil punishment, &c.) 
2. The Objective Mind. — (1.) The immediate objective being 
(Daseyn) of the free will is the right. The individual, so far as 
he is capable of rights, so far as he has rights and exercises them, 
is a person. The maxim of right is, therefore, be a person and 
have respect to other persons. The person allows himself an ex- 
ternal sphere for his freedom, a substratum in which he can exer- 
cise his will : as property, possession. As person I have the right 
of possession, the absolute right of appropriation, the right to cast 



HEGEL. 359 

my will over every thing, which thereby becomes mine. But 
there exist other persons besides myself. My right is, therefore, 
limited through the right of others. There thus arises a conflict 
between will and will, which is settled in a compact, in a common 
will. The relation of compact is the first step towards the state, 
but only the first step, for if we should define the state as a com- 
pact of all with all, this would sink it in the category of private 
rights and private property. It does not depend upon the will 
of the individual whether he will live in the state or not. The 
relation of compact refers to private property. In a compact, 
therefore, two wills merge themselves in a common will, which as 
such becomes a right. But just here lies also the possibility of a 
conflict between the individual will and the right or the universal 
will. The separation of the two is a wrong (civil wrong, fraud, 
crime). This separation demands a reconciliation, a restoration 
of the right or the universal will from its momentary suppression 
or negation by the particular will. The right restoring itself in 
respect of the particular will, and establishing a negation of the 
wrong, is punishment. Those theories, which found the right of 
punishment in some end of warning or improvement, mistake the 
essence of punishment. Threatening, warning, &c., are finite 
ends, i. e. means, and moreover uncertain means : but an act of 
righteousness should not be made a means ; righteousness is not 
exercised in order that any thing other than itself shall be gained. 
The fulfilment and self-manifestation of righteousness is absolute 
end, self-end. The particular views we have mentioned, can only 
be considered in reference to the mode of punishment. The pun- 
ishment which is inflicted on a criminal, is his right, his ration- 
ality, his law, beneath which he should be subsumed. His act 
comes back upon himself. Hegel also defends capital punishment 
whose abolition seemed to him as an untimely sentimentalism. 

(2.) The removal of the opposition of the universal and par- 
ticular will in the subject constitutes morality. In morality the 
freedom of the will is carried forward to a self-determination of 
the subjectivity, and the abstract right becomes duty and virtue. 
The moral standpoint is the standpoint of conscience, it is the 



360 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

right of the subjective will, the right of a free ethical decision. 
In the consideration of strict right, it is no inquiry what my prin- 
ciple or my view might be, but in morality the question is at once 
directed towards the purpose and moving spring of the will. 
Hegel calls this standpoint of moral reflection and dutiful action 
for a reason — morality, in distinction from a substantial, uncondi- 
tioned and unreflecting ethics. This standpoint has three ele- 
ments; (1) the element of resolution {vorsatz), where we consider 
the inner determination of the acting subject, that which allows 
an act to be ascribed only to me, and the blame of it to rest only 
on my will (imputation) ; (2) the element of purpose, where the 
completed act is regarded not according to its consequences, but 
according to its relative worth in reference to myself. The reso- 
lution was still internal ; but now the act is completed, and I must 
suffer myself to judge according to the constituents of the act, be- 
cause I must have known the circumstances under which I acted ; 
(3) the element of the good, where the act is judged ^according to 
its universal worth. The good is peculiarly the reconciliation of 
the particular subjective will with the universal will, or with the 
conception of the will ; in other words, to will the rational is good. 
Opposed to this is evil, or the elevation of the subjective will 
against the universal, the attempt to set up the peculiar and indi- 
vidual choice as absolute ; in other words, to will the irrational is 
evil. 

(3.) In morality we had conscience and the abstract good (the 
good which ought to be) standing over against each other. The 
concrete identity of the two, the union of subjective and objective 
good, is ethics. In the ethical the good has become actualized in 
an existing world, and a nature of self-consciousness. 

The ethical mind is seen at first immediately, or in a natural 
form, as marriage and the family. Three elements meet together 
in marriage, which should not be separated, and which are so often 
and so wrongly isolated. Marriage is (1) a sexual relation, and is 
founded upon a difference of sex ; it is, therefore, something other 
than Platonic love or monkish asceticism ; (2) it is a civil con- 
tract ; (3) it is love. Yet Hegel lays no great stress upon this 



I 



HEGEL. 361 

subjective element in concluding upon marriage, for a reciprocal 
affection will spring up in the married life. It is more ethical 
when a determination to marry is first, and a definite personal 
affection follows afterwards, for marriage is most prominently duty. 
Hegel would, therefore, place the greatest obstacles in the way of 
a dissolution of marriage. He has also developed and described 
in other respects the family state with a profound ethical feeling. 

Since the family becomes separated into a multitude of fami- 
lies, it is a civil society^ in which the members, though still inde- 
pendent individuals, are bound in unity by their wants, by the 
constitution of rights as a means of security for person and pro- 
perty, and by an outward administrative arrangement. Hegel 
distinguished the civil society from the state in opposition to most 
modern theorists upon the subject, who, regarding it as the great 
end of the state to give security of property and of personal free- 
dom, reduced the state to a civil society^ But on such a stand- 
point which would make the state wholly of wants and of rights, 
it is impossible, e, g. to conceive of war. On the ground of civil 
society each one stands for himself, is independent, and makes 
himself as end, while every thing else is a means for him. But 
the state, on the contrary, knows no independent individuals, each 
one of whom may regard and pursue only his own well-being ; 
but in the state, the whole is the end, and the individual is the 
means.- — For the administration of justice, Hegel, in opposition to 
those of our time who deny the right of legislation, would have 
written and intelligible laws, which should be within reach of every 
one ; still farther, justice should be administered by a public trial 
by jury. — In respect of the organization of civil society, Hegel ex- 
presses a great preference for a corporation. Sanctity of mar- 
riage, he says, and honor in corporations, are the two elements 
around which the disorganization of civil society turns. 

Civil society passes over into the state since the interest of the 
individual loses itself in the idea of an ethical whole. The state 
is the ethical idea actualized, it is the ethical mind as it rules over 
the action and knowledge of the individuals conceived in it. 
Finally the states themselves, since they appear as individuals in 
16 



362 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

an attracting or repelling relation to each other, represent, in their 
destiny, in their rise and fall, the process of the luorld^s history. 

In his apprehension of the state, Hegel approached very near 
the ancient notion, which merged the individual and the right of 
individuality, wholly in the will of the state. He held fast to the ■ 
omnipotence of the state in the ancient sense. Hence his resist- ^ 
ance to modern liberalism, which would allow indiv^iduals to pos- 
tulate, to criticize, and to will according to their improved knowl- 
edge. The state is with Hegel the rational and ethical substance 
in which the individual has to live, it is the existing reason to 
which the individual has to submit himself with a free view. He 
regarded a limited monarchy as the best form of government, after 
the manner of the English constitution, to which Hegel was 
especially inclined, and in reference to which he uttered his well- 
known saying that the king was but the dot upon the i. There 
must be an individual, Jfegel supposes, who can affirm for the 
state, who can prefix an "J will " to the resolves of the state, and 
who can be the head of a formal decision. The personality of a 
state, he says, '' is only actual as a person, as monarch." Hence 
Hegel defends hereditary monarchy, but he places the nobility by 
its side as a mediating element between people and prince — not 
indeed to control or limit the government, nor to maintain the 
rights of the people, but only that the people may experience that 
there is a good rule, that the consciousness of the people may be 
with the government and that the state may enter into the sub- 
jective consciousness of the people. ^ 

States and the minds of individual races pour their currents 
into the stream of the world's history. The strife, the victory, 
and the subjection of the spirits of individual races, and the pass- 
ing over of the world spirit from one people to another, is the con- 
tent of the world's history. The development of the world's his- 
tory is generally connected with some ruling race, which carries 
in itself the world spirit in its present stage of development, and 
in distinction from which the spirits of other races have no rights. 
Thus these race-spirits stand around the throne of the absolute 



HEGEL. 363 

spirit, as the executors of its actualization, as the witnesses and 
adornment of its glory. 

3. The Absolute Mind. — (1.) j^sthetics. The absolute mind 
is immediately present to the sensuous intuition as the beautiful or as 
art. The beautiful is the appearance of the idea through a sensible 
medium (a crystal, color, tone, poetry) ; it is the idea actualized 
in the form of a limited phenomenon. To the beautiful (and to 
its subordinate kinds, the simply beautiful, the sublime, and the 
comical) two factors always belong, thought and matter ; but both 
these are inseparable from each other ; the matter is the outer 
phenomenon of the thought, and should express nothing but the 
thought which inspires it and shines through it. The different 
ways in which matter and form are connected, furnish the differ- 
ent forms of art. In the symbolic form of art the matter prepon- 
derates ; the thought presses through it, and brings out the ideal 
only with difficulty. In the classic form of art, the ideal has at- 
tained its adequate existence in the matter ; content and form are 
absolutely befitting each other. Lastly, in romantic art, the mind 
preponderates, and the matter is a mere appearance and sign 
through which the mind every where breaks out, and struggles up 
above the material. The system of particular arts is connected 
with the different forms of art ; but the distinction of one par- 
ticular art from another, depends especially upon the difference 
of the material. 

(a.) The beginning of art is Architecture. It belongs essen- 
tially to the symbolic form of art, since in it the sensible matter 
far preponderates, and it first seeks the true conformity between 
content and form. Its material is stone, which it fashions ac- 
cording to the laws of gravity. Hence it has the character of 
magnitude, of silent earnestness, of oriental sublimity. 

(i.) Sculpture. — The material of this art is also stone, but it 
advances from the inorganic to the organic. It gives the stone a 
bodily form, and makes it only a serving vehicle of the thought. 
In sculpture, the material, the stone, since it represents the body, 
that building of the soul, in its clearness and beauty, disappears 



364 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

wholly in the ideal ; there is nothing left of the material which 
does not serve the idea. 

(c.) Painting. — This is pre-eminently a romantic art. It 
represents, as sculpture cannot do, the life of the soul, the look, the 
disposition, the heart. Its medium is no longer a coarse material 
substratum, but the colored surface, and the soul-like play of 
light ; it gives the appearance only of complete spacial dimen- 
sion. Hence it is able to represent in a complete dramatic 
movement the whole scale of feelings, conditions of heart, and 
actions. 

(d.) Music, — This leaves out all relation of space. Its mate- 
rial is sound, the vibration of a sonorous body. It leaves, there- 
fore, the field of sensuous intuition, and works exclusively upon 
the sensation. Its basis is the breast of the sensitive soul. Music 
is the most subjective art. 

{e.) Lastly in Poetry ^ or the speaking art, is the tongue of art 
loosed ; poetry can represent every thing. Its material is not the 
mere sound, but the sound as word, as the sign of a representa- 
tion, as the expression of reason. But this material cannot be 
formed at random, but only in verse according to certain rhythmi- 
cal and musical laws. In poetry, all other arts return again ; as 
epic, representing in a pleasing and extended narrative the figura- 
tive history of races, it corresponds to the plastic arts ; as lyric, 
expressing some inner condition of soul, it corresponds to music ; 
as dramatic poetry, exhibiting the struggles between characters 
acting out of directly opposite interests, it is the union of both 
these arts. 

(2.) Philosophy of Beligion. — Poetry forms the transition 
from art to religion. In art the idea was present for the intui- 
tion, in religion it is present for the representation. The content 
of every religion is the reconciliation of the finite with the infi- 
nite, of the subject with God. All religions seek a union of the 
divine and the human. This was done in the crudest form by 

[a.) The natural religions of the oriental world. God is, with 
them, but a power of nature, a substance of nature, in comparison 
with which the finite and the individual disappear as nothing. 



HEGEL. 365 

(b.) A higher idea of God is attained by the religions of spir- 
itual individuality, in which the divine is looked upon as subject, — 
as an exalted subjectivity, full of power and wisdom in Judaism, 
the religion of sublimity ; as a circle of plastic divine forms in the 
Grecian reJigion, the religion of beauty ; as an absolute end of 
the state in the Roman religion, the religion of the understand- 
ing or of design. 

[c) The revealed or Christian religion jBrst establishes a posi- 
tive reconciliation between God and the world, by beholding the 
actual unity of the divine and the human in the person of Christ, 
the God-man, and apprehending God as triune, i. e. as Himself, as 
incarnate, and as returning from this incarnation to Himself. The 
intellectual content of revealed religion, or of Christianity, is thus 
the same as that of speculative philosophy; the only difference 
being, that in the one case the content is represented in the form 
of the representation, in the form of a history ; while, in the other, 
it appears in the form of the conception. Stripped of its form of 
religious representation, we have now the standpoint of 

(3.) The Absolute Philosophy^ or the thought knowing itself 
as all truth, and reproducing the whole natural and intellectual 
universe from itself, having the system of philosophy for its de- 
velopment — a closed circle of circles. 



With Hegel closes the history of philosophy. The philosophi- 
cal developments which have succeeded him, and which are part- 
ly a carrying out of his system, and partly the attempt to lay a 
new basis for philosophy, belong to the present, and not yet to 
history. 



THE END. 



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